The Cathedrals of Canada - 3. Amos

Recent controversy in the Church in Ireland has focused on the amalgamation of small dioceses but few Irish dioceses are as small as the diocese of Amos, established in 1938 from a portion of the territory of what had been since 1919 the diocese of Haileybury and was to become in 1978 the diocese of Timmins.

Timmins itself has only 48,000 Catholics out of 88,000 souls. On the other hand the diocese of Amos has something in common with many Irish dioceses in that of the 98,000 souls 93% of them are Catholics, a proportion that isn't extraordinarily high for Québec. Although the population of Amos is not large the size of the territory is vast, larger than the rest of the dioceses of Québec put together, including the Nunavik territory.

The Cathedral of the diocese of Amos is dedicated to St. Therese, 'the Little Flower' and has another unique distinction of being the only Romano-Byzantine Cathedral in North America. Built in 1922-3 to the designs of the great Montréalais (church) architect Aristide Beaugrand-Champagne (1876-1950), it is a basilica upon a circular plan with only a practical nod to a cruciform plan.

It sits on a prominent hill within cathedral park, on the east bank of the River Harricana, presiding over the city and visible from almost every point

The construction of the cathedral, in contrast to its historical style, is of modern steel and reinforced concrete, quite a novel construction method for the time. The dome measures 30.48 meters in diameter, was at the time of its construction, the largest reinforced concrete dome in Quebec but was exceeded by the dome of St. Joseph's Oratory in Montréal in 1937 (35.05 meters in diameter) and was the largest self-supporting dome of its kind in North America at the time. The cathedral rises to 49 meters to the dome.

The Cathedral retains its altar rails but unfortunately the tabernacle has been taken to one side and the bishop's throne now sits in the central position in the apse behind an altar brought to the edge of the step so that Mass cannot be celebrated 'ad orientem'.

The diocese has a wonderful 360 degree view of the interior available here and the details of the inventory of places of worship can be found here.

The Structure of Catholicism in Canada

From those early days of the Archdiocese of Québec (1659) and the two Suffragans (1819), the structures of Holy Mother Church in Canada have developed into the normal structures of a National Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Provinces (17), and Sui Generis Jurisdictions (7).

The following Ecclesiastical Provinces of Canada (Archdioceses: Suffragans)

Edmonton: Calgary, Saint Paul in Alberta
Gatineau: Amos, Mont-Laurier, Rouyn-Noranda
Grouard-McLennan: Mackenzie-Fort Smith, Whitehorse
Halifax-Yarmouth: Antigonish, Charlottetown
Keewatin-Le Pas: Churchill-Baie d’Hudson, Moosonee
Kingston: Alexandria-Cornwall, Peterborough, Sault Sainte Marie
Moncton: Bathurst, Edmundston, Saint John, New Brunswick
Montréal: Joliette, Saint-Jean-Longueuil, Saint-Jérôme, Valleyfield
Ottawa: Hearst, Pembroke, Timmins
Québec: Chicoutimi, Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, Trois Rivières
Regina: Prince-Albert, Saskatoon
Rimouski: Baie-Comeau, Gaspé
Saint John’s, Newfoundland: Corner Brook and Labrador, Grand Falls
Sherbrooke: Nicolet, Saint-Hyacinthe
Toronto: Hamilton, London, Saint Catharines, Thunder Bay
Vancouver: Kamloops, Nelson, Prince George, Victoria
Winnipeg (Ukrainian): Edmonton (Ukrainian) (Eparchy), New Westminster (Ukrainian) (Eparchy), Saskatoon (Ukrainian) (Eparchy), Toronto (Ukrainian) (Eparchy)

The Archdioceses of Saint-Boniface and Winnipeg are sui generis and there are also sui generis jusisdictions of Canadian Military Ordinariate and the Eastern Catholic sui generis Eparchies of Saint-Maron de Montréal (Maronite), Saint-Sauveur de Montréal (Melkite Greek), Saints Cyril and Methodius of Toronto (Slovakian), and Mar Addai of Toronto (Chaldean).

The 2001 Census found that 12.8 million Canadians, 43% of the population, identified themselves as Catholics. A survey conducted in 2000 found that outside of Québec, weekly Mass attendance was 32%, down from 75% in 1950, while in Québec, which accounts for about a quarter of the Catholics in Canada, the rate of weekly Mass attendance was 20%, down from 88% in 1950.

In the end of the 1960s, Canada had 21,191 Priests. In 2000, it had a mere 9,832.

Today, three Canadian Dioceses are vacant: Timmins, Alexandria-Cornwall, and Saint Paul in Alberta.

According to the Annuario Pontificio 2011, the three largest Dioceses in terms of numbers of Catholics are Toronto (1,931,000), Montréal (1,590,150), and Québec (1,040,690), which, between them have more than one third of the whole Catholic population of Canada.