Marc Armand Ouellet (born 8 June 1944) is a Canadian prelate of the Catholic Church. He was the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America from 2010 to 2023. He was Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada from 2003 to 2010. He was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II on 21 October 2003. Ouellet was considered a possible candidate for election to the papacy in both 2005 and 2013. He spent his early career as a priest from 1972 to 2001 developing his credentials as a theologian and working as a seminary teacher and administrator in Canada, Colombia, and Rome. He also served briefly in the Roman Curia from 2001 to 2003. Early life Ouellet was born on 8 June 1944 into a Catholic family of eight children in La Motte, Quebec. His father, Pierre, was a farmer who was self-taught, and later director-general of the area's school board. Ouellet attended Mass at Église Saint-Luc (now a community centre) regularly with his family. Ouellet later described his family as religious but not very devout. His childhood interests included reading, ice hockey, hunting partridge, and fishing. One of his summer jobs was fighting forest fires. While recovering from a hockey injury at age 17, he read Thérèse of Lisieux and started a more focused search for meaning. Although his father was reluctant to see his son become a priest, Ouellet while still a teenager informed him he had made a firm decision. Career He studied at the Major Seminary of Montreal from 1964 to 1969, earning a licentiate in theology. He was ordained a priest on 25 May 1968. He became vicar at the Saint-Sauveur church in nearby Val-d'Or for 1968–70 and then began years of alternating seminary work with further studies. He taught philosophy in 1970–71 at the Major Seminary of Bogotá, Colombia, which was run by the Sulpicians. He joined the Sulpicians in 1972. At the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Angelicum in Rome, he earned a license in philosophy in 1974. He returned to teaching at the Major Seminary of Manizales, Colombia, joining in its management as well and then performed those same roles at the Grand Séminaire de Montréal beginning in 1976. He studied dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University beginning in 1978, earning a doctorate in 1983 with a thesis on Hans Urs