HOSPITAL BRINGS BACK CRUCIFIX.
Management swayed by public outcry
MONTREAL • After a patient complained last month about the presence of a large crucifix on the wall of the publicly funded Saint-Sacrament Hospital in Quebec City, management determined that in the interest of the “religious neutrality of the state,” it should come down.
It seemed a reasonable response in a province where religious symbols are frequently seen as an affront to secularism. A bill now before the National Assembly would prohibit Muslim women who wear the facecovering niqab from receiving government services in the interest of “fostering adherence to State religious neutrality.”
But when it comes to religious symbols in Quebec, some are more equal than others.
After being confronted with a violent threat, a scolding from government ministers and a petition signed by more than 13,000 people, the hospital announced Wednesday that it was restoring the crucifix to its place inside the main entrance.
Premier Philippe Couillard said Wednesday that he does not think “people from other cultures” are bothered to see Christ hanging from a cross in the provincial legislature or in a hospital.
“Managing this question of diversity does not mean turning our back to our heritage and our history,” he told reporters.
After initially saying Tuesday that he was not interested in dictating what hospitals hang on their walls, Health Minister Gaétan Barrette criticized the hospital Wednesday for removing the crucifix. He said in an interview that his department wrote to the hospital administration Wednesday morning informing them that the removal was not justified by any law or government guideline and that it ran counter to the need to listen to the public.
Barrette said Quebec’s health-care system owes a debt to religious orders that opened hospitals like SaintSacrament, and that heritage should not be erased. “It’s behaviour similar to Russia in 1917,” he said, referring to the destruction of symbols of the Czarist regime following the revolution.
The hospital had said it decided to remove the crucifix because patients are not there by choice and religious symbols can have a “coercive” character for some. “We must first respect the rights of our patients, who are in a way confined in the institution,” the hospital wrote in a statement.
The hospital faced a barrage of criticism, accused of abandoning Quebec’s Catholic heritage.
An online petition said taking down the crucifix showed a lack of respect to the nuns who helped build Quebec. “In the current context where religions that come to Quebec have to be respected, some people feel that the traditions of people long established here are being called into question,” the petition said.
Bernard Drainville, the former Parti Québécois cabinet minister who championed a charter of Quebec values that would have prohibited public servants from wearing the hijab or kippa, urged listeners of his Quebec City radio show to sign the petition.
An arch-Catholic group calling itself Mouvement Tradition Québec hung its own crucifix on Sunday in place of the one removed, but it was also taken down. Étienne Dumas, a spokesman for the group, applauded the government’s intervention to have the crucifix returned. He said he does not think people of other faiths should take offence.
“I don’t think they’ll faint over this,” he said. “We are in our country. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
Quebec City Archbishop Gérald Cyprien Lacroix had urged the hospital to return the crucifix. Its removal, he said, showed “a lack of sensitivity toward our people and its history, as well as a lack of respect toward the religious women who founded the hospital and who worked there for many decades.” Lacroix expressed his admiration for “all those who dared make known their dissatisfaction with respect and conviction.”
That group would not include a man in his 50s arrested late Tuesday by Quebec City police. He is suspected of being responsible for what the hospital described as “a significant threat” to the hospital and its managers. Prosecutors are reviewing the file of the man, whose identity was not released, to determine if he will be charged. He was released on a promise to appear in court if charged.
Barrette said he understands that some people might see a double standard in the attention paid to restricting minority religious symbols in Quebec while people leap to the defence of a Catholic symbol hanging in a hospital or the legislature. But he said they are mistaken.
“It’s not a symbol of authority,” he said of the cross. “It’s heritage.”
(THE CRUCIFIX IS) NOT A SYMBOL OF AUTHORITY. IT’S HERITAGE.