Upon returning to Canada, he completed a doctoral degree in moral theology and went on to teach at seminaries in his home province and Alberta.

Mass was not celebrated every Sunday at the local church, so the family gathered around the kitchen table for what he called a "para-liturgy" when it was not held.

This entailed singing hymns, going through the readings and Gospel of the day, talking about the texts and its relevance to their everyday lives, and concluded with praying the Rosary.

After graduating from the latter institute, he went on to study one year of arts and subsequently joined the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate novitiate at St. Norbert in August 1950.

[3][9] On July 7, 1957, Exner was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in Roviano, on the outskirts of Rome,[1][13] by Luigi Faveri, the Bishop of Tivoli at the time.

[9] He subsequently taught at the Oblate seminary of St. Charles Scholasticate in Battleford as professor of moral theology from 1960 to 1972 and served as its rector for six of those years.

[9][20][21][B] His predecessor, Cardinal George Flahiff, perceived Exner to be "well experienced" and a "man of good judgment" and predicted a promising future for the archdiocese with him in charge.

[24][25] He also directed the cessation of a monthly Tridentine Mass in late 1986, pointing to declining attendance as the reason for abandoning the 22-month long trial run within the archdiocese.

[28] Although he was billed as "Canada's most outspoken conservative prelate" by Joel Connelly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,[29] Exner eschewed the use of such categorizations, considering himself as "middle-of-the-road".

[27] He found that he was sometimes "labelled as too conservative, and sometimes as too liberal" and that his goal was simply to "combat the idea that Catholics can pick and choose which dogma to accept".

[27] In contrast to his immediate predecessor, James Carney, Exner was perceived as being comfortable speaking to the media, having personally responded to a phone call by the Vancouver Sun shortly after his appointment without having to go through a secretary.

[10] Exner acted as principal consecrator at the episcopal ordination of Gerald Wiesner, held in Prince George, British Columbia, on February 22, 1993.

[2][11][46] His funeral was held fifteen days later on September 20 at St. Mary's Church in Grayson, where he received first Holy Communion and celebrated his first Mass after his priestly ordination.

[47] Exner worked with other religious groups involved in healthcare in obtaining a legal agreement with Michael Harcourt, the Premier of British Columbia, in 1995.

[38] Exner also voiced his opposition to efforts by Colin Hansen, the provincial Minister of Health, to close St. Mary's Hospital in New Westminster.

[50] Consequently, the two high schools faced closure and liquidation in order to pay the victims of the Mount Cashel Orphanage sexual and physical abuse scandal.

[50] Exner was of the opinion that the court's judgment was unjustified, since the schools were not owned by the order and had been financed by local Catholics in the decades before the liquidation.

[52] Exner also assisted Covenant House, a home for runaway street kids, in establishing a branch of its services into Vancouver.

Exner was one of seven members on the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) Ad Hoc Committee on Child Sexual Abuse.

Catholic wrote an editorial in the paper in the aftermath of the attack that was criticized for posing the rhetorical question, "How can anyone help but be pleased that murders of abortionists just might have some positive side effects".

[59] As chairman of the Catholic Organization for Life and Family, Exner wrote a letter in November 1998 to George W. Bush, the Governor of Texas at the time.

[62] The Catholic Civil Rights League sought and obtained intervenor status during litigation in the late 1990s involving Trinity Western University (TWU), in relation to its training policies.

The BCCT had rejected TWU's application for certification[63] because the university required its students to sign a community covenant pledging to abstain from all sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage.

Exner was vocal in his opposition to the provincial government's plan in 1998 of expanding the pension benefits of public servants to encompass those with same-sex partners.

[29][68] Ujjal Dosanjh, the province's attorney general, was warm to Exner's idea but cautioned that it would be "highly expensive" and potentially "open to abuse".

[69] Tim Stevenson, a United Church of Canada minister and the first openly gay member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia,[70] lambasted Exner as "a homophobic individual".

[68] Brian Thorpe, the United Church's provincial executive secretary who is also gay,[71] attempted to strike a more conciliatory tone by noting how "Catholic teaching is rigorously logical" and is "able to separate doctrine from its emotional content in such a way that I think it's quite possible for a Roman Catholic to express doctrine and not have personally negative feelings to homosexual people".

This was ostensibly in response to the credit union releasing an advertisement showing two men sitting with their cheeks touching with the caption, "I want to bank with people who value all partnerships".

[72] However, in a letter to the Vancouver Sun explaining the reasoning behind the decision, Exner wrote that it boiled down to Vancity's "support for causes opposed to Catholic morals [that] went far beyond ads featuring same-sex couples".

It is presented annually to give recognition to "outstanding achievement in advocacy, education, life issues, media and culture, and philanthropy".