Pope Francis travels to Canada, seeks reconciliation with indigenous peoples OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
Pope Francis
left Rome on Sunday morning on what he called a penitential pilgrimage to Canada, where he will attempt to atone for the historic abuse of indigenous children in church-run residential schools.
This week’s visit, explicitly with an apology and reconciliation in mind, is extraordinary, even for a Pope known for his dramatic gestures of humility. Still, it may not be enough to appease native leaders and elders who say the Pope must go beyond his previous plea for forgiveness for Catholics’ role in the schools.
“You can say anything from across the ocean,” said Diena Jules, an elder of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc community in British Columbia, who would like the church to provide more information about the schools. He has already apologized verbally. Now we have to take action.”
For more than a century, Indigenous children—often by force or coercion—were sent to state-sponsored residential schools to assimilate them into white Canadian culture. The last schools closed in the 1990s. Students in the schools, most of which were run by Catholic or other Christian groups, were often* or physically abused.
Signage for the Pope’s visit to the site of a former residential school in Maskwacis, Alberta.
Photo:
Amber Bracken/Reuters
According to a 2015 report by a Canadian government-funded Truth and Reconciliation Commission, more than 150,000 indigenous children attended the schools, which the report described as a system of cultural genocide. At least 3,200 children died amid poor sanitation conditions in the schools, the report found. Many more died, according to researchers continuing the work of the commission.
The issue of residential schools came back to the fore in May 2021, after studies using ground-penetrating radar revealed evidence of about 200 suspected graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.
“It’s had a ripple effect around the world and I think it’s opened the door for international talks,” said Ms. Jules, who began the effort to search the Kamloops site.
In the US, Kamloops’ findings led to a Department of Interior investigation that found evidence of cemeteries at 53 Indigenous children’s boarding schools.
In Canada, the findings led to a national reckoning that has been compared by a Canadian legislator to protests against racism in the US following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Several Indigenous groups presented evidence of more than 1,000 possible graves at or near the sites of former schools.
Much anger was directed at the Catholic Church, which had operated the Kamloops school. Catholic and other churches across the country were burned or vandalized, actions denounced by indigenous leaders and prime minister
Justin Trudeau.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a collective apology last September, acknowledging “serious abuses committed by some members of our Catholic community: physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, cultural and *.”
In March this year, Canadian indigenous leaders came to the Vatican for a series of meetings with Pope Francis. The Pope expressed his “outrage and shame” at the “deplorable behavior of the members of the Catholic Church” involved in the schools.
“I ask God’s forgiveness and I would like to say to you with all my heart: I am very sorry. And I join my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in apologizing to you,” the pope told native leaders. He also confirmed his already announced plan to come to Canada.
Last week preparations for the Pope’s visit to a church in Maskwacis, Alberta.
Photo:
Amber Bracken/Reuters
This week’s route takes the Pope from Alberta, in western Canada, to Quebec’s historic Catholic heartland, and finally to the city of Iqaluit, about 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle. At each stop, the focus will be on the Catholic Church’s relationship with Native Canadians.
“This visit is certainly different from any visit we are used to with a Pope; it’s very, very focused,” said Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton, who is coordinating the papal visit. “Indigenous presence is a priority at any event.”
A statement by Mr. Trudeau in May about the Pope’s visit only referred to an expectation of “a formal personal apology in Canada from the Roman Catholic Church to survivors and their families”, and made no reference to other possible topics.
The Vatican spokesman suggested last week that the Pope is likely to tackle other issues, including one of his signature issues, climate change, which is a priority for many indigenous leaders.
The program is unusually light by Pope Francis’ standards, with only two public events on most days, reflecting the Pope’s immobilization due to a torn ligament in his right knee. The Pope has been using a wheelchair since early May and had to attend major ceremonies in the Vatican. He canceled a trip planned earlier this month to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo due to knee problems.
Following his departure from Rome on Sunday, the Pope followed his custom of individually greeting the 80 or so journalists on board the plane as they struggled down the aisles with a cane. He did not comment on the trip, but noted that Sunday was the Catholic Church’s annual day to honor the elderly, and urged young people to be close to their grandparents and younger members of religious orders to do the same. to do with their older brethren.
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The Pope is expected to express his grief and ask for forgiveness several times during his trip to Canada, beginning with his first public appearance Monday morning in Maskwacis, Alberta, the site of a former residential school about 60 miles from Edmonton.
Some indigenous people want him to go beyond Rome and apologize on behalf of the church as an institution.
“There are many, many survivors who were concerned that when Pope Francis apologized, he was only targeting individual abusers,” said Phil Fontaine, a former national head of the Assembly of First Nations and one of the indigenous leaders who met the Pope this spring. “They said that’s not a real apology.”
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Canadian who heads the Vatican’s office for social justice concerns and who accompanies the Pope, said: “I expect what the Pope will say will be more human, symbolic and spiritually intense” than his statement in Rome.
The cardinal recalled that Pope Francis made a general apology to indigenous peoples that went beyond the actions of individuals during a 2015 visit to Bolivia when he said: “I humbly ask for forgiveness, not just for the transgressions of the Church itself. , but also for the crimes committed against the indigenous peoples during the so-called conquest of America.”
Indigenous leaders say they also expect the Pope to heed some of the concrete demands they made of him in Rome, including the provision of church records relevant to the residential schools and the return of Indigenous artifacts now on display. are in the Vatican Museums.
In response to a request for comment, the Holy See’s news agency said the relevant school records are not in the Vatican, but in the records of Canadian dioceses and of the religious orders active in Canada. The Vatican Museums are in talks with indigenous groups about the distribution of artifacts from their culture, the press service said.
Mr Fontaine said he is hopeful that, despite the deep anger that persists in indigenous communities, the papal visit will be crucial to their reconciliation with the Church.
“This is a good time for the Pope to come here specifically to Canada to apologize. He humbled himself to come to our country,’ said Mr Fontaine. “There will be people who will say, ‘Yeah, I’ve been waiting for this. Now I can begin my healing journey.” ”
Write to Francis X. Rocca at [email protected]
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