Pope Francis meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the Vatican on May 29, 2017. / © L’Osservatore Romano.
Rome Newsroom, Jul 23, 2022 / 08:15 am (CNA).
The 37th Apostolic Journey of Pope Francis, which will take him to Canada from July 24-30, is a “penitential pilgrimage”: The Holy Father will “meet and embrace the indigenous peoples”, and he will apologize for the role of the Church in a system guilty of deadly neglect, suffering and abuse.
In doing so, the pope may also set in motion another process of healing and reconciliation: a normalization of the Holy See’s relationship with the government of Canada.
A key moment, preparing the portentous papal pilgrimage to Canada, took place in the Vatican on May 29, 2017.
On that day, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau extended an invitation to Pope Francis to visit the country, during which time he could bring the Church’s apology for harm done to indigenous people in the mid-19th through 20th centuries.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which ran from 2008-2015, concluded that thousands of children died whilst attending “Indian Residential Schools”, and called for action on 94 points.
Of these, four were directed at the Church. The were published in the section “Church apologies and reconciliation”.
In it, the commission called on Pope Francis “to issue an apology to Survivors, their families, and communities for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools.”
The commission worked out its suggestions for healing and reconciliation by drawing on voluminous reports about the legacy of the residential schools system. Assessing these, including the question of responsibilities in what was perpetrated in those schools, turned out to be far more complex than many expected.
A government program run by Christian churches
The “Indian residential schools” system was a network of boarding schools created by the Canadian federal government in the 19th century. It was mainly supported by government funds and supervised by government officials
The system existed from 1833 to 1996, when the last of these schools was closed. The schools were run by several Christian denominations, including some Catholic dioceses and religious communities.
These schools did not simply provide education to children of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. In reality, they served to provide a program of assimilation, carried out against a population often mistakenly perceived as an “obstacle” to the nation’s “progress”.
The Canadian Bishops’ Conference explained on its website that this system had a burdensome human cost: “While many alumni and school staff have spoken positively about their experiences in some schools, many others today say of much more painful memories and legacies, such as the prohibition of Aboriginal languages and cultural practices, as well as cases of emotional abuse, physical and even sexual. “
The involvement of the Catholic Church
About 16 out of 70 Canadian dioceses have been associated with residential schools, in addition to about forty of a hundred or so religious communities in Canada.
The Canadian Bishops’ Conference acknowledged in a November 1993 brief for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People that “the various types of abuse experienced in some residential schools have led us to a profound examination of conscience in the Church.”
Since the 1990s, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Canada and orders such as the Jesuits offered apology statements such as this one on the bishops’ official website.
The response also included the establishment of a $30 million national pledge made by Canadian Bishops in September 2021.
Similarly, the Holy See has increasingly come to terms with this chapter of the Church’s history in Canada.
Pope John Paul II visited in 1984 and 1987. On both occasions, he met indigenous people, exalting their culture and the renewal brought to them by Christianity.
Benedict XVI met with Phil Fontaine, Great Chief of the Assembly of the First Nations of Canada, at the end of the general audience on Apr. 29, 2009.
He “recalled that since the earliest days of her presence in Canada, the Church, particularly through her missionary personnel, has closely accompanied the indigenous peoples.” Referring to residential schools, Benedict XVI expressed “his sorrow at the anguish caused by the deplorable conduct of some members of the Church, and he offered his sympathy and prayerful solidarity.”
An early whistleblower and a recent warning
At the turn of the 20th century, Peter Henderson Bryce, a public health official and physician, was the first to report about unsanitary conditions in residential schools in Canada. He gathered all the information he could and then, in 1907, published his findings — according to which about a quarter of the indigenous children in residential schools had died of tuberculosis.
Bryce also pointed to the wider question of discrimination, noting that health funds for average citizens of Ottawa were about three times higher than those for First Nations peoples.
Government policies, in other words, had caused the deaths of many indigenous children.
Following attempts by government officials to silence him, Bryce published, at his expense, a small booklet on the issue, titled The Story of a National Crime.
Writing about “myth versus evidence”, Mark DeWolf noted in a 2018 essay — published by public policy think tank FCPP — that “cultural repression, abuse of all kinds, forceful incarceration and even avoidable deaths did happen, and a system that should have done much more to avoid these things should be justly condemned.”
He concluded that the residential schools system was bad and “a deeply flawed attempt to accomplish two main objectives: to give native children education and training that would help them survive economically and socially in a white man’s world, and to eradicate those aspects of native culture that would hold them back from achieving those goals.”
At the same time, pointing to low attendance numbers and other aspects of the system, DeWolf warned of making the residential schools “a scapegoat for 200 years of land appropriation, cultural invasion, deprivation, marginalization, and demoralization.”
Otherwise, little would be done to stop and reverse bad policies and practices today.
This point is pertinent, irrespective of whether one agrees with DeWolf otherwise: A 2019 Canadian Human Rights Court ruling established that between 2006 and 2017, the government had removed between 40,000 to 80,000 indigenous children from their families and deprived them of social services. In addition, the ruling sentenced Canada to pay $40,000 to each victim for discriminatory conduct. The government appealed the ruling, without success.
To further add to the complexity, critics have raised questions about irresponsible media reporting when the discovery of what was first described as unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential made international news.
On June 24, 2021, it was first announced that 751 unmarked graves had been discovered at the site of a former school. Leaders emphasized that the discovery was of unmarked graves, and not a “mass grave site.”
Nonetheless, following the news, some Catholic churches in Canada were vandalized or found ablaze.
A gesture with consequences – and an open question
Pope Francis decided to apologize for the Catholic Church’s role and assume responsibility, neither commenting on the issue of sometimes questionable media coverage, nor pursuing the question of just how responsible the Church was within the wider historical context.
In short, this visit is a great act of goodwill by the pope, and one that intends to heal and reconcile.
This may also apply to relations between Canada and the Holy See, as these have been strained for a while. The issue of the “Indian residential schools” system was likely one of the reasons.
Currently, Canada has not formally appointed an ambassador to the Holy See. There is a chargée d’Affaires, Paul Gibbard. He took the position in the year 2021, after three years of vacancy. The last Canadian ambassador to the Holy See was Dennis Savoie, who was in office from 2014 to 2018.
This Papal trip might help to somewhat normalize relations, and the position of Gibbard might be upgraded to that of an ambassador. However, after the visit, the full reality and extent of the residential schools system still needs to be fully brought to light — and not just with a view to the role of the Church.
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Yah, soon we will have Cardinal Fernandez. Perhaps the next Pope Francis II? Then Tucho can heal us all with his poetry! This will develop our understanding of the kiss of peace. What an Amoris it is to synodal.
I’m sad and angry my favorites among the “anti-Pope Francis Catholics” are not included here: San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, and “America’s Bishop” Joseph Strickland.
The spasmodic appointments of the last week are like watching the death throes of some baby boomer ideology. It is as if we are witnessing Arius burst a gut in the streets of Constantinople. It is asi if an old man is screaming at the end: I’ll make this permanent!”. “All will know that 2+2=5!” “I am the god of gravity; it’s laws are suspended; we are all now free to jump off buildings.” Yada yada yada. What a bother. It puts me in such a theological bad mood.
Speaking of permanency. Francis’ attempt to make a church in his image and likeness reminds me of Peter wanting to erect tents at the Transfiguration. Remember what happened after Peter impetuously spoke such ridiculous words? God spoke from the cloud: “Listen to Him!” (Jesus).
God the Father, the Son and their Spirit will have the final word…as to what becomes Francis’ legacy. In that we may rest assured.
Here’s what I think is a relevant standard by which to judge any cleric – but especially bishops and that includes the one in charge of the Rome diocese. The mission of the Church is the salvation of souls carried out by the evangelization of peoples. A rating of A+ should be assigned to a cleric who is so effective in proclaiming the Gospel that the culture is converted – including its values, morals and lifestyle such that they reflect those of Christ. An “F” is assigned to those clerics who, rather than converting the culture by their teaching, preaching and orthopraxis are instead converted by the culture. Clerics who deserve an “F” reflect in their preaching, teaching and witness the values and morals of a secular, atheistic culture.
Now, I invite Catholics to rate those prelates who have been invited to participate in this Sinod on Synodidolotry – especially the recently-named cardinals.
The new and unscheduled cardinal appointments might be more about stacking a future conclave than about the two synods (2023, 2024). It might be that there’s more anxiety than we know—and that the momentum behind the dark side in the two synods is vulnerable to the real Holy Spirit.
After all, it was probably momentum more than sober consensus that led to the so-called “Trinity” nuclear bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and that cratered two cities within three days (!) in 1945 Japan.
Is the perennial Catholic Church to be cratered by the momentum of two synods? In 1945, the long-term and warned result was a half century nuclear arms race with all the chips on the table. Likewise, with the momentum of “walking together,” as if the momentum of ersatz and backside religion can really dispose of the perennial Catholic Church and the natural law. And, as if we can simply edit away the fact that “philosophy always buries its undertakers” (Etienne Gilson, a lay theologian!).
About which, the Second Vatican Council: “The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation [!] before the glorious manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf 1 Tim 6:14, Tit. 2:13)” (Dei Verbum, n. 4).
And, about the welcomed (!) wedding guest who then showed up without a wedding gown, see Matt 22:13.
Just in case the Holy Spirit can’t hear the “listening” church well enough, it’s best to make sure that the next enclave is in the bag for the “progressives”, eh? There’s a 67% chance that the next pope will carry on the current pope’s “legacy”. But wait. There’s more! You, too, can show your support for the current pontiff! Get thee to a Latin Mass Community or Chapel. Stay there. Enjoy Catholicism while you still can. O, and don’t bother calling this “pope” the Vicar of Christ, and don’t dare kiss his ring, unless you wish to unleash his wrath. Come, Lord Jesus!
I also have named a number of Bergoglio’s new appointees. And the names I have given them are both amusing and descriptive, especially the one for Archbishop Fernandez.
(Yes, it absolutely does reference his best known work on theology, ‘Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing’.)
Unfortunately, in light of the standards enunciated by CWR governing comments by readers — specifically, “comments containing obscene language or personal attacks, or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory, will not be published” — I will not be able to share those amusing names here.
Sorry.
This papacy reminds me of the Trump administration, perhaps with a pinch of Kim Jung Un.
Actually the Trump administration appointed PRO LIFE JUDGES to the Supreme Court. BTW, those judges overturned R V W
Doesn’t prove anything. Over turn and eventually turn back again.
and he actually talked to some nuns on the White House lawn
Wokester:)
Funny. This papacy reminds me more of the Biden administration.
Except for the fact that Trump was NEVER invited to meet with the Pope; meanwhile, Obama/Clinton/Pelosi/Biden/Kerry all have. Let’s keep the LEFTIST pro-paganda OUT of the religion section in the news, shall we?
It’s possible that he is throwing boomerangs.. The Holy Spirit has a sense of humor! 😂
Mongolia has a cardinal with less than 5 thousand Catholics, Australia has over 5 million Catholics and no cardinal. I guess Archbishop Fisher of Sydney is too orthodox for the Vatican.
Wishing Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández and his brand new fellow colleagues – wisdom, inspiration, strength, stamina, and divine blessings in the challenges ahead.
It’s amazing that, even with the death of Cdl. Pell, Australia is not worthy of a cardinal. If pope Francis should pass away before any further consistory, them Australia will have no vote for a new pope. but smaller places like Tonga an Papua New Guinea will.
Who stood for what in the COVID-vaccination impostures.