His chosen home: Palestine 1876-1888

Father Frederic took his first steps in the Middle East in Cairo, Egypt, where he was assigned as a chaplain to the Brothers of the Christian Schools.

In 1878, he headed to Palestine, where he became Custodial Vicar, an assistant to the Custody Superior of the Order of Friars Minor in the Holy Land. Since 1342, the Custody had brought together 350 Franciscans to serve as guardians of holy places for the Church and to work in service of pilgrims and local people.

During his 10 years as Custodial Vicar, he carried out a wide range of tasks. One turned out to be a major challenge: working to maintain a peaceful coexistence among different ethnic and religious groups who all consider Palestine to be a holy site.

To accomplish this task, Father Frederic created a codex of rules to ensure respect for every rite practised in the Holy Land by members of the different religions who visit the same holy places: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. This codex is still being used to this day.

Before writing it, he had to closely observe, day and night, the customs in place in each group. These observations were collected in two books of 500 and 300 pages respectively.

During his mandate, he also worked on some major construction projects: the churches of Saint Catherine in Bethlehem and Saint Saviour of Jerusalem, as well as the Hospitalité Notre-Dame de France, where his retreats were held.

These many tasks did not prevent Father Frederic from giving sermons as well as organizing and leading pilgrimages. He was even given permission to preach the stations of the cross in French on Good Friday in the streets of Jerusalem.

Father Frederic was also responsible for collecting alms for the Custody’s works. In the context of this work, in March 1881 he met Father Léon Provancher, a priest from Cap Rouge, Québec, who invited him to come to Canada. He knew of Canada through the work done in the early period of colonization by the Récollets, who were Franciscan missionaries.

Father Frederic arrived in Québec on August 24, 1881, eager to get to work. His main objective was to share his love for the holy places of the Holy Land with the faithful of the province. He also had a mission to obtain the Canadian bishops’ permission to create a Commissariat of the Holy Land in Canada and to organize a regular collection for Holy Land sites. This trip also allowed him to visit the order’s Tertiary fraternities and to create new ones.

He was touched by the warm welcome he received in Quebec, especially during the retreat he gave in Saint-Roch a month after he arrived. Thousands of the faithful came to meet him and to worship the relics of the Holy Land he had brought with him.

Despite the warmth of this welcome, the cold Québec winter was hard on his health. He was forced to take to his bed to rest for a long period. A few months later, in June 1882, he left Canada.

In his book about his first trip to Canada, he would admit to having left “with great sadness, but not without a certain hope to one day see again these people blessed by God.”