WEDGEPORT — Rev. Greg Sampson sits at the dining room table in his residence next to St. Michael’s Church in Wedgeport and talks excitedly about the new superior general of his order, the Eudist Fathers.
The Eudists have elected
Colombian priest Rev. Camilo Bernal Hadad to be their world leader. Hadad has spent years working with the poor in Bogota and will now guide his order from Rome, said Sampson.
"We’re a teaching order," he said. "We began in France in 1642 and we came to Canada in 1890."
When the Eudist Fathers, in flowing robes, arrived, they landed at Halifax and headed straight for Church Point in Digby County, where they founded a college for the Acadian population — College Sainte-Anne.
"I taught there for 10 years, English to Quebecers," said Sampson, who was born in St. Peter’s, on Cape Breton Island.
The Nova Scotia institution they founded, now known as Universite Sainte-Anne, is no longer affiliated with the Eudists, but remains Nova Scotia’s only francophone university.
Eudists played an important role in the Roman Catholic Church of the early 20th century in this province. But their numbers are dwindling.
At 86, Sampson is not the oldest of the six remaining Eudist priests in Nova Scotia. Rev. Maurice LeBlanc in nearby Pubnico is one year older.
All of Nova Scotia’s remaining Eudist priests are in Digby and Yarmouth counties.
They have been losing members steadily, and there is little interest in trying to bolster their ranks in the province.
"We’re way down in our numbers in North America. There’s very few vocations now in the church," said Sampson, who has been a Eudist priest for 57 years.
"At one point, we had five colleges in French Canada."
The Eudists also had a seminary years ago in Halifax — Holy Heart — which is gone now.
"We just don’t have the personnel," he said.
Sampson taught in Nova Scotia and in Bathurst, N.B., where the order also had a college. He was bursar of the school there and later spent 27 years in Buffalo, N.Y.
The Eudists are formally known as the Congregation of Jesus and Mary.
"Saint John Eudes was our founder. He was from Normandy," Sampson said.
"He said everything that was in the heart of Mary was in the heart of Jesus."
The Eudist Fathers have a long tradition of working with the poor throughout the world and providing education. Their official website says four of its priests were martyred in Paris during the French Revolution.
