Canadian Catholic Bishops “unequivocally apologize” for residential school suffering

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OTTAWA – Canada’s Catholic Bishops “unequivocally” apologize to Indigenous peoples for the suffering endured in residential schools, just as Pope Francis prepares to meet Indigenous leaders at the Vatican later this fall.

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The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops agreed to wording for the one-page statement in a meeting Thursday. He says that with the religious entities that were directly involved in the management of the residential schools, the bishops express “our deep remorse and unequivocally apologize.”

“We recognize the serious abuses that have been committed by some members of our Catholic community; physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, cultural and sexual, ”he says.

“We also sadly recognize the historical and continuing trauma and legacy of suffering and challenges faced by Indigenous peoples that endure to this day. “

They also promise to provide materials that could help “memorize” students buried in anonymous graves, work to get the Pope to visit Canada, and raise funds to help fund initiatives recommended by local Indigenous partners.

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The church has come under heavy criticism for failing to provide all school documents requested by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and for raising less than a sixth of a pledged $ 25 million fund for reconciliation and reconciliation. healing under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. over a decade ago.

The bishops’ apologies are the latest expression of remorse on the Canadian arms of the Catholic Church, but still fall short of the TRC’s call to action for the Pope himself to apologize to Canada.

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National Indigenous leaders, elders, youth and residential school survivors are due to travel to Rome in mid-December for four days of meetings, some of which hope will be the final precursor to such an apology.

Assembly of First Nations national chief RoseAnne Archibald has yet to respond to the bishops’ latest statement. In August, she said AFN still had to decide whether to send someone to the December Vatican meeting, but that she would not go herself.

“We have been very public that we want the Pope here in Canada to apologize on Canadian soil,” she said.

The 2015 TRC report said the apology should be made within one year and be similar to Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 apology to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland.

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Less than a month after the calls to action, Pope Francis traveled to Bolivia where he apologized “for the crimes committed against indigenous peoples during the so-called conquest of America”.

In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau directly asked the Pope for an apology during a visit to the Vatican, but months later Pope Francis let Canadian bishops know he “could not respond personally” to the question. ‘call.

Pressure for an apology in Canada escalated further last spring, as hundreds of anonymous graves were discovered at the sites of former residential schools, believed to contain the remains of deceased children in schools.

There have also been calls for the release of records held by the church that could help identify children who have been buried, often without their families ever being informed of their deaths.

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Over 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools for over a century when the Canadian government adopted a policy to assimilate Indigenous children, shattering them from their culture, family and language.

The Catholic and Anglican churches ran most of the schools for the government, where children were subjected to rampant emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, director of the Center for Residential School History and Dialogue at the University of British Columbia, said Friday’s statement would be “welcome to those who believe the primary focus is papal apologies ”.

But she said the statement lacked “key details” about truth and accountability and left “a gap between those heartwarming words and actual action.”

Because the involvement of the Catholic Church in the management of schools stems from several entities, there is not a single point of responsibility, which is inconvenient, said Turpel-Lafond.

“The scattered approach to date has jeopardized our ability to determine what happened to missing children and unmarked burials, and left an incomplete historical record of what happened,” she said. declared.

The statement also does not admit that the church failed to meet its financial obligations under the settlement agreement, she added.