Native leaders in Canada and the survivors of the notorious schools for residential students are scheduled to meet with Pope Francis to secure an apology from the pope for the violations against them committed through Catholic teachers and priests. Staff.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Indigenous peoples from Canada as well as survivors of the notorious residential schools in the country are scheduled to meet in a meeting with Pope Francis starting Monday in the hope of obtaining an apology from the pope for the violations against them committed through Catholic clergy and staff.
The meeting, delayed from December due to the pandemic, is a part of the Canadian government’s and the church’s efforts to meet Indigenous demand for reparations and justice long-standing issues that gained momentum last year following discovering hundreds of graves that were not marked in the vicinity of schools.
In talks in interviews with The Associated Press, as they arrived in Rome on Sunday, Indigenous leaders expressed hope that Francis will indeed apologize. Still, they also said that their primary goal during this time was to share with the pope about the history of their people and the abuses they suffered and asked Francis to be attentive.
“Most of our meeting will be elevating the voices of our survivors,” said Cassidy Caron, president of the Metis National Council, who received a traditional hand-crafted beaded jacket that she will wear Monday morning to the opening audience along with the red beaded moccasins for the pope. The pope will be able to hear the
The group wrote in a statement that the moccasins were given “as a sign of the willingness of the Metis people to forgive if there is meaningful action from the church,” the group wrote in a statement. The red color “represents that even though Pope Francis does not wear the traditional red papal shoes, he walks with the legacy of those who came before him, the good, the great and the terrible.”
Francis has scheduled a few hours this week for meetings in private with delegations of the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit and has the presence of a mental health professional in the room at the beginning of every session. The participants then gather each Friday to form a group to attend a formal gathering, including Francis giving an address
More than 150,000 children from the native population were forced to attend public-funded Christian schools beginning in the 19th century and continuing until the 1970s as a way to separate these children from their families and their culture and to Christianize them and integrate them into the mainstream of society, which previous governments viewed as superior.
It is known that the Canadian government has acknowledged that sexual and physical abuse was commonplace, and students were beaten for speaking their indigenous languages. The history of violence and isolation has been mentioned as a reason for the isolation and abuse by Indigenous leaders as the root of the rising prevalence of alcohol and drug addiction in reservations.
About three-quarters of all the residential schools in the country were run in the hands of Catholic missionary churches.
In May, the Tk’emlups Secwepemc Nation discovered 215 graves in the vicinity of Kamloops, British Columbia, located by ground-penetrating radar. This was Canada’s most significant Indigenous residential school and only the beginning of many similar graveyards all over the country.
Before the sites were discovered, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission specifically requested an apology from Pope Francis to be offered on Canadian land for the church’s involvement in the “spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children in Catholic-run residential schools.”
Francis has vowed to travel to Canada. However, no date is set.
“Primarily, the reconciliation needs to be implemented. We are still in need of particular actions by the Catholic Church,” said Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the leader of this Inuit delegation. He also cited the compensations the Canadian church was ordered to pay as well as its commitment to uncovering the truth about the extent of abuse at the schools.
“It goes beyond just opening the doors to records, it also goes towards a general willingness to use church resources to help in any way possible,” he said to AP.
In settling a case involving government, churches, and the roughly 90,000 students who survived, Canada paid reparations that totaled billions of dollars that were given towards Indigenous communities.
The Catholic Church, for its part, has already paid $50 million and is now planning to pay an additional $30 million over the next five years.
The Argentine pope has no qualms about apologizing for his own mistakes and for what he has called”the “crimes” of the institutional Catholic Church.
In 2015, during a trip to Bolivia, He apologized for the crimes, sins, and crimes perpetrated by church officials towards Indigenous indigenous people in the colonial conquest of the Americas. Then, in Dublin, Ireland, in 2018, he broadly issued an apology in front of Irish females and children who had been physically and sexually abused for decades by church leaders.
In the same year, he also met in private with three Chilean sexual abuse victims who were discredited for backing the bishop they claimed was hiding sexual abuse. Francis listened and apologized in a series of meetings during a week, similar to those of the Canadian participants.
Phil Fontaine was national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 2009 when he was the leader of an Indigenous group to meet with Pope Benedict XVI. At the moment, Benedict did not express his “sorrow at the anguish caused by the deplorable conduct of some members of the church.” However, Fontaine didn’t apologize.
In front of St. Peter’s Square, Fontaine offered a complete papal apology “would be a huge increase in the efforts of thousands of survivors seeking to heal. They’re eager to see real reconciliation happen however reconciliation cannot be possible without truth.”
