It's poised to be one of the biggest events of Quebec City's 400th birthday bash -- a crowd of 100,000 people are expected to gather on the historic Plains of Abraham for a giant mass.It's a sort of religious rock concert that Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the archbishop of Quebec, describes as a "religious and spiritual festival."
And he believes this could revive the Roman Catholic faith that Quebecers have turned away from since the 1960s.
The International Eucharistic Congress is slated for June 2008 and an outdoor mass that could be presided over by Pope Benedict will be the climax of the event. Some 15,000 delegates and 50 Cardinals from 60 countries will meet in Quebec to foster devotion to the eucharist, or mass.
"This will certainly be the culmination of our efforts to re-evangelize Quebec," Ouellet said.
"We have been preparing for this for years. There is a need in Quebec to reconnect with our Christian roots and to revive the Catholic identity," said Ouellet, the primate of the Church in Canada.
Quebec City is regarded as the cradle of French civilization in North America, but its role in the evangelization of the whole continent should also be celebrated, Ouellet says.
The provincial capital, the oldest diocese in Canada, was the gateway for the missionaries who went on to evangelize the continent. Fourteen of them have been beatified or canonized in the past 40 years, including Marie de l'Incarnation, a 17th-century nun who founded the Ursuline order in New France and converted natives, he added.
"There is a lot of criticism in the society now against the Catholic Church, and we need to be reminded of those positive values," Ouellet said.
Until the 1960s, Quebec had one of the highest levels of church attendance in the country. The Roman Catholic Church was regarded as the protector of the French language and culture and it controlled and managed the province's education and social and medical service.
But with the Quiet Revolution, the influence of the church plummeted quickly and Quebecers rebelled against what they saw as the vise-grip-like hold the church had over the province.
That secularization was accompanied by resentment on the part of many people who said the religion was forced on them.
"The Catholic Church held too much sway over Quebecers for some time and it backfired on them," explained Marc Pelchat, a theologian at Laval University.
"It left some Quebecers wounded and hurt and it will likely take some time to fade away," he added.
Pelchat thinks the Eucharistic Congress will be an important event for the Quebec church, but only to a point.
"The church will have to do more than that to win back Quebecers," he said. But he added that the Pope's visit, if it happens, could be an "energetic boost."
Cardinal Ouellet has invited Pope Benedict to the congress, but he does not know yet whether the pontiff will attend.
"I will be in Rome at the end of November and I hope to get a final answer then," Ouellet said.
In 2004, Pope John Paul II appeared at the Eucharistic Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, via an Internet link from Rome.
For a final mass, the church has reserved the Plains of Abraham, the site of the 1759 battle that led to the transfer of control of Canada from the French to the British Empire.
"This is the Catholic Church's gift for the 400th anniversary of Quebec," Ouellet said.
The gift will cost between $11 and 14 million, depending on the Pope's decision.
Ouellet has been touring the country to publicize the congress, held every four years since the first gathering in Lille, France, in 1881.
The last one that took place in Canada was in Montreal in 1910.
More than 3,500 rooms have been booked for the week of the congress, June 15-22.
But many of the pilgrims will stay with Quebec families or at schools and university residences.
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