Remembering Msgr. Gérald LeBlanc

Archbishop shares some thoughts on beloved local priest

Among the many people who will miss Msgr. Gérald LeBlanc is Most Rev. Anthony Mancini, archbishop of Halifax-Yarmouth, who worked quite a bit with Msgr. LeBlanc and got to know him well since becoming archbishop a decade ago.

Msgr. LeBlanc died March 11 in Halifax at the age of 82. In more than a half-century as a priest, he served various parishes at this end of the province, most recently St. Peter’s in West Pubnico and Immaculate Conception in East Pubnico. His funeral was held March 14.

“He spent his lifetime serving the people of this area and I think that was his great strength, that he was a native son looking after the people that had been entrusted to him,” Mancini said.

Shortly after arriving in West Pubnico the day before he was to preside at the funeral, the archbishop shared a few thoughts on LeBlanc.

Even though he had the title of monsignor – a result of being appointed Honorary Prelate of the Church by Pope John Paul II in 2004 – LeBlanc was called Père Gérald by most who knew him, the archbishop said. Msgr. Gérald LeBlanc – pictured in July 2017 laying a flower at the unveiling of an Acadian Odyssey monument in West Pubnico – died Sunday, March 11, at the age of 82. His funeral was held Wednesday, March 14, in West Pubnico.

“Why they referred to him as Père Gérald was because he was truly a father for the people that he served,” Mancini said. “He served as a priest for 54 years and all of those years were spent among the people of this area, the Acadians. He loved the fact that he was with his people and he knew the history and he just loved being here doing what he truly felt God called him to do. That’s why people are going to miss him and I’m going to miss him as well.”

Born in Wedgeport in 1935, Gérald Joseph LeBlanc received his early education in his native village and later attended Collège SainteAnne. He was ordained in 1963 and went on to serve Roman Catholic parishes in a number of communities in Yarmouth County and Clare. In 1993 he became vicar general, first for Yarmouth and later for Halifax-Yarmouth.

“He and I worked very closely together,” Most Rev. Mancini said. “He was my right-hand man here in this whole area.”

The archbishop said he had last seen and spoken to LeBlanc a couple of days or so before he died. He was frail but talkative, he said.

LeBlanc was very kind, always attentive to the concerns of other people, the archbishop said, and he will be missed.

On the eve of the funeral, as the region was being hit by a latewinter snowstorm, the archbishop said, “We will pray for Père Gérald and he will keep an eye on us from where he is, I’m sure, in heaven.”