has been delivered—they come to realize that once again, John A. Macdonald likes to ignore them. His pleasure in insulting the Métis and the rest of the settlers seems to have no boundaries.
Maybe it is the scorn of the government and the anger of the priests, combined with the newfound pressure of becoming the Métis leader once more, that trigger Louis to begin to reveal his secret. Experts on Riel, including the biographer Maggie Siggins and the American academic Thomas Flanagan, emphasize a heated discussion between Louis and a priest named Father Valentin Végréville in early December of 1884. The day after a wedding celebration during which Louis stays up all night praying on his knees, he runs into the cleric and berates him, insisting that the whole hierarchy of the priesthood right up to archbishop should march with the Métis. It’s during this lecture that Louis utters one simple line, but one that carries great weight: “I have a task to accomplish by reason of a divine vocation.” A divine vocation? While on the surface these words appear simple enough, for a man already viewed as a rebel and maybe even a heretic by the priests, to actually admit aloud that he believes he is basically on a mission from God will certainly give them reason to pause. More importantly, Louis’s words will provide them with ammunition to use against him.
Also well documented is another, more explosive confrontation between Louis and the clergy just a few days later. This time Louis supposedly confronts a number of priests at once while they are on a retreat. Father André, the same tough old minister to the buffalo hunters and a man so easily angered by even the slightest sign of disrespect toward his rule, is ready with his response. André bellows that Louis is becoming an enemy of the priests and that they will speak against him to all the Métis. To dare question the Church’s authority as hotly as he does means Louis is one of three things: a non-believer (which he certainly isn’t), a sinner who can be saved (which he might hopefully be), or a heretic most probably under Satan’s control (which some priests believe is a real possibility). After the run-in at the retreat, the priests discuss whether Louis, for daring to question their authority and lack of support of the Métis, should face the worst punishment available to the Catholic Church: no more receiving of the sacraments and, as some of the priests present later claim, excommunication as a heretic.
What’s been fiercely debated about this whole scenario— and many others in which Louis is the focus—is that so many of the key moments were reported long after they are supposed to have happened, and by people who had plenty of reason to twist them to their liking. The story the priests tell is that when Louis was told he was making enemies of them, he fell to his knees, crying and begging for forgiveness. It was given to him only when he promised never to lead an uprising again. In hindsight, once the uprising actually did occur and everyone around Batoche, holy men included, was on the possible hook, of course it served the priests’ best interests to cover their own cassocks. But this might be too simple.
Louis Riel can in no way be understood if his deep faith isn’t taken into account. He never utters a negative word against the priests or the church in his diaries. Of course the priests who wrote about this event had grounds to distance themselves as far as possible from Louis when agitation quickly exploded into killing. But this is not the only reason they would paint Riel as an unstable man, a man who’s insane. To do so could save not just his soul but also his life during the trial that would decide his fate. When men like Father Fourmond and Father André came to the stand during Riel’s trial, his life hung in the balance, and they indeed argued that Riel was insane.
Regardless, when the new year of 1885, the last year of his life,
Maybe it is the scorn of the government and the anger of the priests, combined with the newfound pressure of becoming the Métis leader once more, that trigger Louis to begin to reveal his secret. Experts on Riel, including the biographer Maggie Siggins and the American academic Thomas Flanagan, emphasize a heated discussion between Louis and a priest named Father Valentin Végréville in early December of 1884. The day after a wedding celebration during which Louis stays up all night praying on his knees, he runs into the cleric and berates him, insisting that the whole hierarchy of the priesthood right up to archbishop should march with the Métis. It’s during this lecture that Louis utters one simple line, but one that carries great weight: “I have a task to accomplish by reason of a divine vocation.” A divine vocation? While on the surface these words appear simple enough, for a man already viewed as a rebel and maybe even a heretic by the priests, to actually admit aloud that he believes he is basically on a mission from God will certainly give them reason to pause. More importantly, Louis’s words will provide them with ammunition to use against him.
Also well documented is another, more explosive confrontation between Louis and the clergy just a few days later. This time Louis supposedly confronts a number of priests at once while they are on a retreat. Father André, the same tough old minister to the buffalo hunters and a man so easily angered by even the slightest sign of disrespect toward his rule, is ready with his response. André bellows that Louis is becoming an enemy of the priests and that they will speak against him to all the Métis. To dare question the Church’s authority as hotly as he does means Louis is one of three things: a non-believer (which he certainly isn’t), a sinner who can be saved (which he might hopefully be), or a heretic most probably under Satan’s control (which some priests believe is a real possibility). After the run-in at the retreat, the priests discuss whether Louis, for daring to question their authority and lack of support of the Métis, should face the worst punishment available to the Catholic Church: no more receiving of the sacraments and, as some of the priests present later claim, excommunication as a heretic.
What’s been fiercely debated about this whole scenario— and many others in which Louis is the focus—is that so many of the key moments were reported long after they are supposed to have happened, and by people who had plenty of reason to twist them to their liking. The story the priests tell is that when Louis was told he was making enemies of them, he fell to his knees, crying and begging for forgiveness. It was given to him only when he promised never to lead an uprising again. In hindsight, once the uprising actually did occur and everyone around Batoche, holy men included, was on the possible hook, of course it served the priests’ best interests to cover their own cassocks. But this might be too simple.
Louis Riel can in no way be understood if his deep faith isn’t taken into account. He never utters a negative word against the priests or the church in his diaries. Of course the priests who wrote about this event had grounds to distance themselves as far as possible from Louis when agitation quickly exploded into killing. But this is not the only reason they would paint Riel as an unstable man, a man who’s insane. To do so could save not just his soul but also his life during the trial that would decide his fate. When men like Father Fourmond and Father André came to the stand during Riel’s trial, his life hung in the balance, and they indeed argued that Riel was insane.
Regardless, when the new year of 1885, the last year of his life,
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