09/04/2026
Yesterday my former employer, the Anglican Diocese of Montreal, made a public post to thousands of people which named me and made inaccurate statements about my ministry, over three years after I left their employment.
At best that was bizarre. It was deeply hurtful. Moreover, it was completely inappropriate and unprofessional of all the signatories of the post, and they should be held accountable. I asked that they remove the post and repost a more fair version. Yesterday I received two vicious emails from one of the authors, the Ven. Dr. Deborah Meister, who now is vicar general (second in command) of the diocese. The latter of her emails was the pastoral advice, "Get a grip." This is the level of compassion and professionalism we are dealing with.
First of all why am I addressing this publicly? Because I have tried all available mechanisms within the Anglican Church structure, and to no avail.
Transparency and public accountability are the best hope we have to make the church behave in a way Christians can recognize as following our Saviour. Some believe that we are called to make the church "look good," but covering up the truth only makes the church look like a lying institution that covers up the truth, and ultimately the way we are called to make the church look good is by making the church *be* good.
I am going to address the content and context of the post.
The diocese claimed context is that they simply wanted to make sure that students knew where they could find ministry as the school year begins, a cause with which I agree. To justify their wilful underinvestment in young adults, they blamed current challenges with St. Martha's Chapel, an ecumenical student ministry that I led until three years ago, on me:
"Under the leadership of the Rev Jean-Daniel O’Donncada, St Martha’s made the decision to step away from McGill and seek an identity as an ecumenical young adult ministry housed at the cathedral. Unfortunately, that decision not only cut it off from the stream of young adults arriving in Montreal each fall, but it also left the ministry without a clear vision, mission, or identity."
This is a complete lie.
At no point did the ministry "step away" from McGill University, but the two things that they might pretend to be talking about are:
1. That my office moved from the Anglican seminary on campus to the Anglican diocese offices a few blocks away, a decision that was made by the Anglican seminary, for the good reason that they had an increase in students and needed the room.
2. That McGill University stopped accrediting chaplains as members of university staff, a decision they made across-the-board for all faith traditions.
Despite those changes, we continued to provide ministry to McGill students, through the office of religious and spiritual life of the university I was present at events on campus, and while we had a decrease in participation during the Covid years, at no point in my ministry that I ever cease ministry on the university campus.
As far as being hosted at the cathedral, it is true that when I began the ministry my office was on the university campus, our young adult worship services were at the local United Church, and our Bible studies were at the Anglican Church. This blend of locations made it clear that we were a multichurch ministry to McGill students. Eventually the United Church ceased offering to host our worship services in order to make income from renting the space to a paying theatre group, a decision that I considered deeply unfortunate priorities, but theirs to make. At that point, combined with my office move, the cathedral did become the physical centre of our ministries.
At that time, both the diocese and the cathedral exerted considerable pressure on me to downplay our ecumenical identity, and tried to take over the ministry, including inappropriately telling me what to do unilaterally despite the fact that I did in fact report to multiple denominations and that we had our own board.
For the diocese, which was the organization that was striving to make our ministry less attached to the university and less attached to other churches, to now claim that *I* moved it to the cathedral is simply weird.
The insulting part of their statement is that I left the ministry without a "clear vision, mission, or identity."
The front of the Saint Martha's website even now still says, as I put on it when I still was the director and web designer, "a multi-church ministry to students and young adults in Montréal." Our mission was to bring together young adults into a community of faith, where they received pastoral care, where they had Bible studies, and where they had one another. For most of my tenure, we were the most successful mainline protestant chaplaincy anywhere in Canada, and our student worship services frequently had more people in attendance than most mainline congregations in Montréal had on a Sunday. There are many young clergy, young married Christian couples, and young adults baptized during their university years, who will attest to this ministry having been thriving and having a clear identity.
The Anglican Diocese was indeed frequently an active obstacle to our vision of including students for multiple universities, and bilingualism, preferring to focus only on the smallest but most prestigious and Anglophone of Montreal's four universities. Insofar as we succeeded, the diocese also frequently complained that they were not getting enough credit and disliked that I thanked our ecumenical partners who also funded the ministry.
So, why would the diocese make the bizarre choice to act as if nothing happened in the last three years, and they weren't running things for the last three years, and blame me, yesterday, of all days?
If they wanted to communicate that a new chaplain was not hired in time for the beginning of the school year, there was no need for a paragraph insulting the chaplain from three years ago.
Simply put, they did so as retaliation. While I was chaplain, I received multiple complaints from young adults about abusive behaviours of a priest formerly employed by the diocese, and the diocese ignored all of those complaints.
Last year that priest ceased working for the diocese, and I reached out to the new leadership, including the Ven. Dr. Deborah Meister. I stated that while I thought it was good that the problematic priest was no longer employed by the diocese, I look forward to the diocese reaching out to his victims to provide pastoral care and make amends. Those requests were ignored. Not denied. Ignored with a petty silent treatment. It is a violation of safe church practises to ignore safe church complaints, so I, in turn, filed a safe church complaint against the diocesan leadership for ignoring my complaints.
Two days ago I made another public statement about how my complaint about ignoring complaints has been ignored by the next higher level of Anglican Church governance, the archbishop of the province of Canada.
Then came this post.
It is also worth noting that as one of three ecumenical partners in this ministry, the diocese is not entitled to make unilateral declarations about its ministry, and even without the personal attack against me this post is an embarrassment to the Anglican Church of Canada's ecumenical relationships.
The bishop of the diocese of Montreal himself has never responded to my emails, and the vicar general ignores emails about safe church issues, but does make the time to send me an email refusing to retract her inaccurate attacks. The three authors of this post were not authorized by the board of Saint Martha's to say what they said, multiple members of the board emailed me yesterday to say that the statement was not an accurate reflection of anything the board had decided, and since the diocese made this post the chair of the board resigned.
My requests remain simple, and I believe reasonable.
1. Retract this Facebook post.
2. Meet with the victims who you have ignored.
3. Maybe this one is a stretch: say sorry.
I beg all of my friends of good faith, but especially Anglicans and Anglican clergy, to contact the Diocese of Montreal and say that you expect better of them.
Complicity with abuse in the Church enables abuse in the Church.
St Martha’s Chapel Update
by DEBORAH MEISTER, JAMES PRATT AND GWENDA WELLS
(from Anglican Montreal September 2026)
Correction: This article fails to make sufficiently clear that the decision to do some internal restructuring before moving to hire a new chaplain was made at the request of the Board of St. Martha's Chapel, in consultation with their ecumenical partners.
For more than twenty years, St Martha’s Chapel has served as a gathering place and spiritual home for young adults in our diocese and beyond. Its origins were in the
ecumenical Protestant chaplaincy at McGill and it built creatively within that identity until a few years ago. The Anglican Diocese’s primary long-term partner has been the United Church of Canada, which has maintained a strong commitment to the ministry.
In recent years, the Disciples of Christ has also made a contribution, while Christ Church Cathedral, provides space and
logistical support. Under the leadership of the Rev Jean-Daniel O’Donncada, St Martha’s made the decision to step away from McGill and seek an identity as an ecumenical young adult ministry housed at the cathedral. Unfortunately, that decision not only cut it off from the stream of young adults arriving in Montreal each fall, but it also left the ministry without a clear vision, mission, or identity.
Following the recent departure of Chaplain Sarah Wicks Potter, the Bishop’s office and the Anglican members of the Board did not feel that the ministry was in a good position to open an immediate search for another chaplain. Instead, we have decided to pause the ministry for a few months while we engage in conversation between the ecumenical partners to clarify the mission and funding, seek ways to re-engage with McGill, and develop expectations for the incoming chaplain.
We also plan to reach out to university chaplaincies across the country to find out what is working well in their contexts, and to exchange with current and potential partners to build a sustainable, inclusive ministry.
Our hope is that these discussions will enable us to re-energize the important work of Christian formation in an atmosphere
of inquiry, service and mutual support for young adults in Montreal, and to allow the new chaplain to begin work
with clarity as to his/her/their objectives and expectations.
In the meantime, St. Martha's has asked Rev’d Sophie Rolland to offer a Bible study for young adults; the St Martha’s website also will direct students to other resources and communities.
