Can you explain the significance of the Pope’s apology for the Catholic Church's role in residential schools?
The Indigenous delegation that visited the Vatican is still asking for reparations and to publicize all records related to residential schools, so there's still more to this story.
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This week, we’re tackling this question: Can you explain the significance of the Pope’s apology for the Catholic Church’s role in residential schools?
TL;DR: After years of refusing to do so, on April 1 Pope Francis apologized for the role that the Catholic Church played in residential schools and the deep harm they caused Indigenous peoples. While some thought the apology struck a hopeful note for future reconciliation, others questioned how long it took and how substantial it was, while experts say there are no legal implications backing the apology. The delegation is still asking for reparations and to publicize all records related to residential schools, so there’s still more to this story.
On April 1, Pope Francis apologized for the Roman Catholic Church’s involvement in the widespread and systematic violence enacted upon Indigenous peoples in Canada through the use of residential schools. The Catholic Church operated about 70 per cent of the schools in the system.
“I feel shame — sorrow and shame — for the role” that Catholics played “in the abuses you suffered and in the lack of respect shown for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values,” Pope Francis said. He hopes to visit Canada in late July to deliver the apology again to survivors in-person.
A delegation of nearly 200 First Nations, Inuit and Métis delegates had traveled to the Vatican a few days earlier to make their formal case for the apology after asking for it for decades. Pope Francis’ apology was the first of its kind to the Indigenous peoples in this country that we now know as Canada. It was also a major reversal of his initial stance, as he had originally declined to do so. (There’s a good chance that the finding of nearly 1,000 bodies buried at former residential school sites across the country last year, which received international media attention, shifted his perspective.)
Aside from asking for the apology, the delegation was also urging the church to pay reparations to survivors and release all documents related to residential schools. Stephanie Scott, the executive director of Canada’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, said in a recent statement that she expects to receive full access to those records next month, which would help illuminate whether the Vatican knew about the child abuse while it was ongoing. For now, they remain in Rome.
While some Indigenous people saw the apology as an encouraging and hopeful moment for the future of reconciliation, other Indigenous leaders felt that it was lacking. There’s much more to be done, the delegation’s leaders have emphasized. Global News took a look at one Indigenous church in Edmonton to get a better picture of these mixed emotions.
“As newsworthy as the apology was, there remain legitimate questions about whether remorse so belatedly expressed, and which had to be so persistently asked for, is not diluted beyond real meaning,” the Toronto Star editorial board wrote in a recent op-ed.
(Further reading: The Toronto Star spoke with residential school survivors and their descendants about Pope Francis’ apology. “The apology is not enough: It didn’t even cover the genocide that happened to us in residential schools,” sixty-four-year-old Geraldine Shingoose said, asking for real justice.)
Experts say that it’s unlikely the apology will have a tangible effect on ongoing court cases in Canada. “With the Catholic Church, we’re so desperate for any acknowledgment or accountability we all scrambled to acknowledge this,” Rob Talach, an Ontario-based lawyer who has filed hundreds of lawsuits against the church, told the Star. “Legally, it’s not going to make a scintilla of a difference, in my assessment.”
Another frustrating moment came as delegates were permitted to visit the Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum at the Vatican, which includes the church’s private collection of Indigenous artifacts. As award-winning Indigenous journalist Tanya Talaga took a few photos, she was asked to leave, a decision she expressed frustration and deep disappointment with.
Here’s someone to follow:
This week, I’m shouting out stateside journo Yvette Cabrera, who is a senior staff writer at Grist covering environmental justice. Recently she reported on how America’s vulnerable public students struggle to recover in the aftermath of climate disasters. She also co-founded Uproot Project, a network of and for environmental journalists of color.
Here’s a story to check out:
Two years into its $600 million media bailout plan, which the Trudeau government promised would be completely transparent, the process is still shrouded in secrecy. In their latest podcast episode, CANADALAND spoke to the chair of the board who decides if a media organization will qualify. The conversation (and the rest of their reporting on this) is absolutely worth a listen.
Too lazy to listen to the full episode? Publisher and EIC Jesse Brown recapped what’s been going on in an engaging Twitter thread.