Pope misses opportunity

Most people would rather “see” a good sermon than hear one, because there is no inspiration more powerful than example.

What a missed opportunity it was, then, and what a tin ear for timing it showed, that Pope Francis declined this week of all weeks, through Canada’s Catholic bishops, to apologize to First Nations in this country for abuses perpetrated by priests, nuns and teachers in residential schools operated by the church.

In the Christian world, this is Holy Week, the week of Christ’s crucifixion, Good Friday the remembrance of the most celebrated act of redemption in history. Christ died, Christians are taught, to redeem the sins of the world gone awry.

Contrition -- the state of being broken open by the burden of sin, humbled sufficiently to atone -- is a central tenet of Catholic teaching. It has its own prayer -- the Act of Contrition, the operative word being “act.”

So it is dismaying that the Pope decided as he did.

A letter released by the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said that while the Pope has recognized the injustices faced by Indigenous peoples around the world from colonialism and conduct by church agents, “he felt that he could not personally respond” to requests in Canada for an apology.

That was one of 94 recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

From the 1880s until the last residential school closed two decades ago, more than 150,000 Indigenous children attended residential schools in Canada, many reporting physical, sexual and emotional abuse. The consequences have rolled down the generations in Indigenous families and communities across the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said he was disappointed at the news, had asked Pope Francis during a visit last year to the Vatican to consider making a direct apology.

In 2008, Canada apologized for the residential schools.

Three years ago, in Bolivia, the Pope issued a general apology to Indigenous peoples in the Americas for the “grave sins” of colonialism. In 2010, he apologized to Irish victims of sexual abuse at the hands of clergy.

It is a mystery to understand - beyond the fears and dictates of lawyers -- why he could not muster a similar act of contrition here. In matters so damaging as the way in which the church and its servants treated the First Nations of Canada, deeds speak loudest.

And as the Book of James teaches, “Faith without works is dead.”