For several days now, the Sulpicians have been the subject of a controversy to which The Duty has been widely echoed in its pages. The source of this controversy seems at first glance rather minor. The gentlemen of Saint-Sulpice have carried out maintenance, due to their state of preservation, of the coat of arms adorning the pediment of the Old Seminary of Saint-Sulpice, rue Notre-Dame Ouest. In doing so, the result was an alteration widely decried by specialists, hence the controversy.
The mistake of the priests of Saint-Sulpice is to have carried out a unilateral intervention here, without authorization from the authorities concerned (the Ministry of Culture and Communications and, by delegation, the City of Montreal) and outside the rules of the art, on a major heritage building located in an equally heritage district. The Sulpicians have, in a way, acted frivolously, as owners who are not very concerned with the rules of maintenance of the historic built heritage for which they are responsible.
In my view, the priests of Saint-Sulpice have to play, with their assets, a role of attentive trustee, concerned with the interests of the population they have served for centuries, but which has also largely allowed them, as lords of Montreal, to constitute this exceptional heritage, made up of buildings, archives, books and objects of art and historical and archaeological artifacts of prime importance. In this way, it seems to me that they have at the very least the moral responsibility to maintain and enhance this ensemble and to contribute to its dissemination, something to which they seem to have become quite indifferent in recent years. They would do well to draw inspiration from other religious communities, the Hospitallers, for example, in their public responsibility. After all, have they not, throughout history, considered education and training as part of their fundamental missions?
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