MONTREAL — If one were the type to place one’s faith in the providence of bookies, Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet was running decent odds to become the next spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

Which raised the question of whether having a hockey-loving hometown boy from La Motte become pope could have raised the fortunes of Catholicism in Quebec — a land where the number of faithful attending church dropped precipitously starting in the 1960s, yet at the same time, 6 million Quebecers still identify themselves as Catholic, baptize their children, bristle at the idea of removing the cross from the National Assembly, and say they would return to the fold, if only it reflected their beliefs.

In the opinion of many local theologians, the answer is probably not. The pendulum has swung too far toward secularization and more liberal values, while the Vatican’s stance on such issues as abortion, homosexuality, contraception, priestly celibacy, religious teaching in schools and allowing women into the priesthood remain too far out of step with the province’s mindset.

Even naming a pope from the ’hood would have made little difference in terms of putting more people back in the pews.

And if that pope had been Cardinal Ouellet, who proved a controversial figure during his tenure as archbishop of Quebec City from 2003 to 2010 for his conservative and unyielding viewpoint even in the opinion of many bishops in the province, the answer is a much more emphatic no, historians agree.

“In my opinion, I think it would be catastrophic for the Catholic Church if he were to be named pope,” Louis Rousseau, a retired professor of theology at the Université du Québec à Montréal, said on Tuesday. “The enemies of the Catholic Church should hope for that.”

Before returning to Quebec as archbishop, Ouellet spent most of the previous 30 years in Latin America, where he had a successful career, primarily training priests.

It was during this time that Quebec society rejected the Catholic Church’s control over politics and institutions such as schools, hospitals and trade unions. Weekly attendance at Sunday mass dropped from more than 80 per cent of Catholics in the 1960s to less than eight per cent today, (as compared with 18 per cent Canada-wide) according to some surveys, as Quebecers quietly abandoned the strict tenets of the church and its control over their lives for a more liberal society. Other shifts, like the decision to deconfessionalize schools in the late 1990s, came after years of public debate.

When Ouellet was appointed archbishop in 2003, he seemed distinctly out of step with modern Quebec society, including the province’s bishops. They had been heeding the population’s call for less church influence in the provincial institutions, much to his dismay.

“His interpretation of the evolution of the church and what he wanted to do did not coincide with the decisions of his colleagues,” Rousseau said. “Notably, he did not want religious teaching to be taken out of schools, or that any religious teaching would no longer be Catholic.” Meanwhile, the province’s bishops had shifted their focus from religious teachings in schools to finding new members and inviting families into parishes.