[Picture on page 681]

Maurice Duplessis, premier of Quebec, publicly kneeling before Cardinal Villeneuve in the late 1930’s and putting a ring on his finger as evidence of the close ties between Church and State. In Quebec, persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses was especially intense

This was an era when the Roman Catholic Church was a powerful influence with which every politician and every judge in the province had to reckon. The clergy were generally held in high esteem in Quebec, and others were quick to obey the dictates of the local priest. As the book State and Salvation (1989) described the situation: “The cardinal of Quebec had a throne on the floor of the Legislative Assembly immediately beside the one reserved for the lieutenant-governor. One way or another much of Quebec was under direct church control . . . The mission of the church was, in fact, to make Quebec’s political life conform to the Roman Catholic concept in which truth is Catholicism, error is anything non-Catholic, and liberty is the freedom to speak and live the Roman Catholic truth.”