Formal papal apology on residential schools urged

OT TAWA • Prime Minister Stephen Harper is being urged to call upon the Pope on Thursday to come to Canada and apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in the aboriginal residential school system.

There are no clear signs Harper will take that step.

But the government has sent a four-paragraph letter to the Vatican, drawing the Pope’s attention to the recent report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Among its recommendations, the commission urged Pope Francis to travel to Canada within the next year and issue an apology for the church’s role in the “spiritual, emotional, physical and sexual abuse” of aboriginal students in Catholic-run schools.

Harper will meet Thursday with the pontiff in the Vatican as he wraps up a trip to Europe.

In the House of Commons on Monday, New Democrat MP Pat Martin noted that the commission believes it is important the Pope apologize for the church’s past actions.

“So far, the prime minister has been deadly silent on any of the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Martin said. “Will he or will he not push the Pope to apologize formally on behalf of the Catholic Church for the role that it played in this intergenerational tragedy?”

Conservative MP Mark Strahl, the government’s parliamentary secretary for aboriginal affairs, responded without providing a direct answer.

He said Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt has written letters to the provinces, territories, mu-

The Catholic Church still has not come to terms with its own wrongdoing in residential schools

nicipalities and the Vatican “to bring their attention” to the TRC report.

In a June 5 letter to the Vatican, Valcourt takes no stand on what the Pope should do. Rather, he writes of how Harper had issued an apology in 2008 to former residential school students, and how the TRC released an executive summary of its final report last week, with 94 recommendations.

“Some recommendations relate to the churches which operated residential schools in Canada,” Valcourt wrote. “I wish to bring these recommendations to the attention of the Holy See.”

The report is blunt in its assessment of how Catholic, Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches that ran the schools “inflicted serious harms on aboriginal children.”

While the three Protestant churches have issued apologies from their leaders, the Catholics released apologies or statements of regret from individual dioceses and religious orders.

In 2009, Pope Benedict met privately in Rome with some aboriginal leaders, and the Vatican later said he “expressed his sorrow at the anguish caused by the deplorable conduct of some members of the church.” But the TRC said those words, said in private, weren’t enough.

“Many survivors raised the lack of a clear Catholic apology from the Vatican as evidence that the Catholic Church still has not come to terms with its own wrongdoing in residential schools, and has permitted many Catholic nuns and priests to maintain that the allegations against their colleagues are false.”