Hebert, Rev. Denis Laurent

Rev. Denis Laurent Hebert was a diocesan priest who served in the Archdiocese of Edmonton and in Central and South Americas. He was born on July 21, 1930 in Villeneuve, Alberta to Rosaire Hebert and Marie Loiselle. He finished his theological studies at St. Joseph’s Seminary in 1958 and was ordained the same year.
He served various city and rural parishes namely: Immaculate Conception and St. Edmund’s in Edmonton, Chauvin and Provost all in 1958, Camrose, 1959; Chauvin, 1959-1960; St. Thomas d’Aquin, Edmonton, 1960-1967; Trochu, 1967-1969.
It was in the Americas, however, that he served the longest arising out of the call from the encyclical Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples) where Pope Paul VI conveyed that the progressive development of “peoples who are trying to escape the ravages of hunger, poverty, endemic disease and ignorance” is “an object of deep interest and concern to the Church.”
In 1969, he started working as a missionary in a parish established by the Archdiocese of Edmonton in Lima, Peru three years prior, serving there until 1976. He then proceeded to Panama (1976-1977), St. Vincent and the Grenadines and ultimately in the community of Edgar Lang in Managua, Nicaragua in 1990.
Rev. Hebert established cooperatives, child and youth programs, health clinics, first aid posts and provided high school and university scholarship programs. His work was supported financially by Canadians. In 1997, a non-profit charity, Roots of Change, was established to ensure that the work that he started will continue after his retirement.
He died in Nicaragua on April 14, 2015.