Pope apologises for Catholic Church’s ‘cultural genocide’ in Canada
Pope Francis expressed his “sorrow, indignation and shame” as he apologised for the Catholic Church’s role in the abuse of more than 150,000 indigenous Canadian children taken from their families and packed off to hellish boarding schools.
Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas, offered an apology to about 2000 survivors gathered at the site of one of the biggest of the former residential schools, where children were starved, beaten and sexually abused in a system Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide”.
The Pope went even further, apologising for Christian support of the overall “colonising mentality” of the times and calling for a “serious investigation” of the schools to assist survivors and descendants in healing.
Among those gathered in the town of Maskwacis in Alberta were tribal chiefs, some of them in beaded shirts and feathered headdresses, others beating traditional drums.
The pontiff said he felt “a deep sense of pain and remorse” having heard of the “devastating experiences” suffered by children at the schools, a decades-long system he described as a “deplorable evil” and “catastrophic” for indigenous people.
“I am deeply sorry,” he said, drawing applause from the survivors seated in front of the stage on which he sat.
“I humbly beg forgiveness . . . for the evil committed by so many Christians.”
The horrific treatment of generations of children from First Nations, Me´ tis and Inuit communities is a dark stain on the conscience of the Catholic Church, which ran around 60 per cent of the residential schools in Canada.
The intention was to assimilate indigenous children into Christian society but the effects were horrific,
amounting to what has been described as “cultural genocide”.
“The policies of assimilation were devastating for the peoples of these lands,” the Pope said.
Survivors of the schools have told of being beaten, raped and forced to eat food so rancid that it made them vomit. In some cases, they were made to eat the vomit, they recounted.
About 4000 children died from disease, neglect and other causes, with many buried in mass graves that have come to light in recent years.
The Pope prayed at a cemetery near the Ermineskin Indian Residential School, which is now largely demolished.
He then addressed survivors of the school, their relatives and Indigenous elders who travelled to the prairie town, located on the ancestral lands of the Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, Saulteaux and Nakota Sioux tribes.
Chief Wilton Littlechild, who attended the school as a child, told the Pope of “the abuse so many of us have suffered at this and other
residential schools”.
He said that as a former commissioner of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he had heard nearly 7000 testimonies from former students.
“Our languages were suppressed, our culture taken from us, and our spirituality denigrated,” said the chief, whose Cree name means Golden Eagle.
“Families were “torn apart”, resulting in “devastation”.
The Pope offered an initial apology in April when survivors and Indigenous leaders met him at the Vatican. But the delegates told him they wanted him to also apologise on Canadian soil, hence the six-day trip, one of the farthest-flung of his pontificate.
Traditional tepees were set up by mental health professionals at the site to offer counselling to anyone experiencing trauma.
“Our people have been through a lot. Our people have been traumatised. Some of them didn’t make it home.
“Now I hope the world will see why our people are so hurt,” said one survivor of the school system, Chief Greg Desjarlais of the Frog Lake First Nation in northern Alberta.
The Canadian government has admitted physical and sexual abuse were rampant in the governmentfunded schools that operated from the 19th century to the 1970s.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year apologised for “the incredibly harmful” residential school system and attended the event in Alberta.
The Catholic Church in Canada says its dioceses and religious orders have provided more than US$50 million ($80m) in cash and contributions to traumatised individuals and communities.
The Canadian government has paid reparations amounting to billions of dollars.
The 85-year-old Pope is suffering from a torn knee ligament and has had to resort to using a wheelchair in recent months.
There was speculation that he might have to cancel the trip as he cancelled a visit to Africa scheduled for earlier this month.
But in the end he appeared determined to go ahead with the Canadian visit, which he described as “a penitential pilgrimage”.