Father Émilien Tardif, missionary
Father Émilien was born in Saint-Zacharie de Beauce on June 6, 1928. One day in our church, hearing a sermon by Father St-Georges Groleau, a missionary in Japan, as he often testified, the desire to become a priest and a missionary was born in his heart. At the age of 12, that is in 1940, his family left for Abitibi, at Rapide-Danseur, as a great many families of our parish did at that time. The young Émilien entered the apostolic school of Beauport, through the good offices of Brother Armand Tardif, one of his brothers, who was in the MSC community.
Father Émilien made his profession among the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in 1949, and was ordained a priest at Rapide-Danseur on June 24, 1955, and left for the Dominican Republic on September 16, 1956. Although I also knew the members of his family in the neighbouring villages, it was only in 1973, when he returned from the Republic to be cared for, that I met Father Émilien; he had just been hospitalized at Laval Hospital and was very emaciated.
In a testimony, this missionary recounted that after the visit of Mrs. Catudal, her husband and son, as well as Mrs. Rose Tardif, his sister, and Mr. Paul Rémi Paquet, his brother-in-law, who had come to the hospital in July to pray for his healing, he had been healed. At that moment I became interested in the renewal and joined the support group of my parish. The charismatic prayer group began on Holy Tuesday 1974, and Father Émilien had come to the first prayer meeting.
And in the same year, in June, I took part with other people of the parish in the first Francophone congress, held in the physical education pavilion of Laval University, and I witnessed up close the healing that Mrs. Hélène Lacroix received during the question period at the end of the workshop led by Father Émilien, whose theme was: faith and the signs that accompany it. It is the first physical miracle that Father Émilien saw, and I too. The Lord was calling him to this ministry of healing throughout the world: “I am the little donkey that carries Jesus.”