 Born in Saint-Jean-Chrysostome, Quebec, the son of Alphonse Parent and Marie Gosselin, he studied at the Collège de Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière and the séminaire de Québec.He was ordained a priest in 1929, and obtained a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of Louvain.During the 1940s, he worked for the Austrian imperial family and for Pope Pius XII.