Martin William Currie was the seventh Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John's, Newfoundland. He retired in 2018 and holds the title of Archbishop Emeritus of St. John's. He had previously served as the Bishop of Grand Falls.
Life
Archbishop Currie was born in Marinette, a small village near Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia, the third of nine children of Everett and Mabel Currie. His father was a woodsman. His paternal family is of Scottish origin and has connections to the MacDonald and MacPherson clans. After studying at St. Francis Xavier University and at Holy Heart Seminary in Halifax, Currie was ordained priest in 1968. For the next 30 years, Martin Currie served the church in a variety of functions. From 1968-1974, Fr. Currie served as assistant in St. Patrick’s Parish, Halifax and St. Charles Parish, Amherst. From 1975 to 1980, he was a missionary and parish priest in Chiclayo, Peru. In 1992, he became vicar general of the Archdiocese of Halifax. In 1998, he was diocesan administrator of the Archdiocese. In 2001 Martin William Currie became a bishop: He was first appointed to the See of Grand Falls. From September 2006 to May 2007 he served concurrently as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Saint John, New Brunswick. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Archbishop of St. John's in October 2007. He was installed in his Archdiocese on November 30, 2007 and received the pallium of metropolitan bishops on June 29, 2008. In spite of his new and higher office, Archbishop Curie continued to exercise his functions as Bishop of Grand Falls until his retirement as Bishop there on Tuesday, March 1, 2011, when Auxiliary BishopRobert Anthony Daniels of the Roman Catholic Diocese of London, Ontario, Canada, was selected by the Pope to take his place there. In a 2018 interview with CBC News, in looking back over his fifty years as a priest, Currie said that the vow of celibacy required of Catholic priests has been difficult, and that he would have made a good father and husband. In comparison to the families of his siblings, Curries recalled that as a young priest, "I would say Mass at Bridgewater...on a Christmas evening... would be saying 'Merry Christmas' and wave to me. They would go home with their family and I would go home and sit by the tree myself. The loneliness of the life was sometimes troubling." Upon his anticipated retirement, Currie plans to return to Nova Scotia to be closer to family. The motto in Archbishop Currie's Coat of Arms is "Dominus fortitudo sperantium" - "... those who hope in the Lord will have their strength renewed..."..
