(Grand Chief Tony Alexis and Pope Francis during their meeting in St. Peter’s Square in 2016.)
Catholics have a role to play in continuing to urge Pope Francis to apologize for the role the church played in running Canada’s residential schools, Crown- Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said Wednesday after the pontiff publicly declined to accept responsibility for the trauma suffered by Indigenous survivors.
The federal government will keep pushing the church to apologize for its role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children in Catholic-run residential schools, as recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Bennett said.
“Sorrow is not enough. Sorrow is never enough,” Bennett said, referencing an expression of regret the former pope delivered to a group of former victims and survivors of the church-run boarding schools who visited the Vatican in 2009.
“One has to take responsibility for the harm that was done, not only to the children that were taken, but for the families left behind.”
A letter released Tuesday by the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops says Pope Francis has not shied away from recognizing injustices faced by Indigenous peoples around the world, but that he can’t personally apologize for residential schools.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is Catholic, said he was disappointed by the Pope’s decision, stressing that reconciliation extends beyond the relationship between the government and Indigenous people. Trudeau visited the Vatican last year, where he personally asked the Pope to consider the gesture.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, also a Catholic, said all institutions that played a significant role in the residential school system should apologize in order to move Canada forward on the path of reconciliation.
The church has offered formal apologies in the past, including in 2010 to Irish victims of sexual abuse and in 2015 to Indigenous peoples in the Americas for the “grave sins” of colonialism.
From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to attend Christian schools, the majority of which were run by the Catholic Church.
The church’s refusal to take responsibility is part of a misplaced belief held by Catholic leaders that the abuse was simply discipline gone wrong, and was justified in order to save souls through religious conversion, Senator and former judge Murray Sinclair, who co-chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said Wednesday on social media.
“Canadian Catholic leaders who persuaded the Pope to adopt this position should be ashamed of themselves,” Sinclair said. “The shame of those who abused children in their institutions in the past is now theirs to wear.”
Sinclair’s son Niigaan, a native studies professor at the University of Manitoba, described the church’s decision as “remarkably short-sighted and disrespectful.”
Reconciliation cannot happen in Canada without an apology from the Catholic Church, he added.
“Before we can have any reconciliation we have to have truth,” Niigaan Sinclair said, adding that an apology would “be a recognition by the church that they participated in genocide.”
Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette, who has Cree and Metis heritage, said he believes the Church will eventually apologize – a day he said may come during a future papal visit to Canada.
“If one man could simply snap his fingers, things would have been done a long time ago, but unfortunately that doesn’t happen in large institutions,” said Ouellette, who said he attends a Catholic church.
The catholic church must accept its passed mistakes.
The catholic church must accept its passed mistakes.
Disappointed…..Church should apologise!!!!
Disappointed…..Church should apologise!!!!
Pope Benedict apologized. Look it up…
“The Pope has found a fresh way to compound an obscenity. It would seem that someone who purported to be Spiritually Enlightened would have reflexively recoiled from such a heinous position.
The leader of the Catholic Church has anointed every vile thing that was ever done to First Nations People with this new and shockingly wretched ignorance.
New categories for disappointment and disillusionment will be required to accommodate this latest outrage.” – Duris Maxwell, Bay of Quinte Mohawks, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory / Graduate, NEC
Pope Benedict apologized. Look it up…
“The Pope has found a fresh way to compound an obscenity. It would seem that someone who purported to be Spiritually Enlightened would have reflexively recoiled from such a heinous position.
The leader of the Catholic Church has anointed every vile thing that was ever done to First Nations People with this new and shockingly wretched ignorance.
New categories for disappointment and disillusionment will be required to accommodate this latest outrage.” – Duris Maxwell, Bay of Quinte Mohawks, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory / Graduate, NEC
Inholy sacreligious perversion isnt easy for anyone to take responsibility for let alone have a genuine apology from a massive belief system as Catholic Church. If they never are sorry for wayward and worldly priests sexaul abuses it must be born of a hatered to of ones that they steal from after acts of War Crimes like rape the children and immoralize them…get it!!! A survivor of Resdl Schl 62
pedo’s dont want to feel sorry for what they did to us and now we get christian natives who will support this like “the pope’s get better things to do” … even thou we’re still here – at least 75% are christian = genocide and destroyed our tradition
Why would they apologize, there’s not enough apologies from them with all our children they abused, sexually, verbally, physically, mentally, emotionally, murdered.
They broke there souls, took away there self respect, there dignity, there self worth, they tried to take away thier identity as a first Nations child, they never realized what they put the parents through.
Yet, they pray to the same god/creator we do.
There self, inconsiderate, human beings,
They will never know love, caring, because deep in there hearts and souls they carry so much guilt inside themselves,
Theres not enuff prayers to hide what they done to our people.
It’s up to god/creator now.
Inholy sacreligious perversion isnt easy for anyone to take responsibility for let alone have a genuine apology from a massive belief system as Catholic Church. If they never are sorry for wayward and worldly priests sexaul abuses it must be born of a hatered to of ones that they steal from after acts of War Crimes like rape the children and immoralize them…get it!!! A survivor of Resdl Schl 62
pedo’s dont want to feel sorry for what they did to us and now we get christian natives who will support this like “the pope’s get better things to do” … even thou we’re still here – at least 75% are christian = genocide and destroyed our tradition
Why would they apologize, there’s not enough apologies from them with all our children they abused, sexually, verbally, physically, mentally, emotionally, murdered.
They broke there souls, took away there self respect, there dignity, there self worth, they tried to take away thier identity as a first Nations child, they never realized what they put the parents through.
Yet, they pray to the same god/creator we do.
There self, inconsiderate, human beings,
They will never know love, caring, because deep in there hearts and souls they carry so much guilt inside themselves,
Theres not enuff prayers to hide what they done to our people.
It’s up to god/creator now.
Tell him to tank his bullshit cap off and apologize for the crucifixtion of Jesus Christ after all the Romans were the ones to crucify Gods one and only head of state upon the earth who was killed by the church and Rome’s idiotic parliamentarians and the Vatican’s after all does he not bare a cap upon which reads one before God upon it that’s total blasphemy he is not even close to ever being awarded entrance into the kingdom of Heaven he is a murderer
Tell him to tank his bullshit cap off and apologize for the crucifixtion of Jesus Christ after all the Romans were the ones to crucify Gods one and only head of state upon the earth who was killed by the church and Rome’s idiotic parliamentarians and the Vatican’s after all does he not bare a cap upon which reads one before God upon it that’s total blasphemy he is not even close to ever being awarded entrance into the kingdom of Heaven he is a murderer