A 'roast and toast' retirement celebration is planned for Guelph’s Cardinal Thomas Collins.
The retirement celebration will be held at the Italian Canadian Club on Nov. 23 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Tickets are $100 and are available by contacting Shaun Redmond via email.
There are 450 tickets and Jim Neville, treasurer for The Guelph Knights of Columbus Charity Trust, expects the tickets to sell out.
Included with the ticket is an Italian meal, dessert, coffee and wine.
Cardinal Collins retired in March.
With the charitable funds from the celebration half will be given to the Cardinal for whatever charities he chooses to give to and the other half will be given to the charities the Guelph Knights of Columbus Charity Trust support, said Neville.
“You just have to offer him your best wishes for a long healthy retirement and may he continue to serve the church in whatever role he finds himself in his retirement,” he said.
Neville will be the emcee for the evening. He will collect the names of people who would like to speak.
The Cardinal was a faithful servant of the church “until his retirement from active duty priesthood,” said Neville. At age 75 he had to retire because it is the mandatory retirement age for the role, he said.
“He did everything that he needed to do as a priest, as a Bishop, as a Cardinal and the man is an excellent speaker. He's also a theological expert on the Book of Revelations,” Neville said.
“Very fatherly, you know he’s not one of these priests that are all hellfire and brimstone,” he said. “But he has a real nice touch when it comes to talking to people either in sermons or when he’s public speaker he has a really nice familiarity about him and the way he delivers his message.
“Well he's a Guelph boy went to high school here. And obviously was drawn to the priesthood. And he served many parishes. And then for a period of time he was the Bishop of Edmonton. And then he became the Archbishop of Toronto. On his way there he was obviously made a Cardinal,” said Neville.
He remembers Collins long before he was a Cardinal. While Neville was the head cashier at what was then the Guelph Daily Mercury, he said. Collins’ father Thomas was the assistant circulation manager and his uncle Joe was the managing editor, Neville said.
“And when Thomas was in high school, that period of time when I was there he would be coming in after school and on Saturdays to help out in the circulation department,” said Neville.
Collins’ would do whatever he was asked to do, he said. He thinks Collins’ character carried through “because both his father and his uncle Joe were two of the finest Catholic gentlemen that I’ve met.”
