Pope in Canada — with apologies
Frances to say sorry for past abuses of Indigenous people
Pope Francis began a historic visit to Canada yesterday to apologise to Indigenous peoples for abuses by missionaries at residential schools. The move marks a key step in the Catholic Church’s efforts to reconcile with Native communities and help heal generations of trauma.
Francis kissed the hand of a residential school survivor as he was greeted at the Edmonton, Alberta, airport by Indigenous representatives, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon, an Inuk who is Canada’s first Indigenous governor general.
The gesture set the tone of what Francis has said is a “penitential pilgrimage” to atone for the role of Catholic missionaries in the forced assimilation of generations of Native children — a visit that has stirred mixed emotions across Canada as survivors and their families cope with the trauma of their losses and receive a long-sought papal apology.
Francis had no official events scheduled yesterday, giving him time to rest before his meeting today with survivors near the site of a former residential school.
Francis exited the back of his plane with the help of an ambulift, given his strained knee ligaments have forced him to use a wheelchair.
As Trudeau and Simon sat beside Francis, a succession of Indigenous leaders and elders greeted the pope and exchanged gifts. At one point, Francis kissed the hand of residential school survivor Elder Alma Desjarlais of the Frog Lake First Nations as she was introduced to him.
“Right now, many of our people are skeptical and they are hurt,” said Grand Chief George Arcand Jr of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations, who greeted the pope. Yet he expressed hope that with the papal apology, “We could begin our journey of healing”.
Indigenous groups are seeking more than just words, though, as they press for access to church archives to learn the fate of children who never returned home from the residential schools. They also want justice for the abusers, financial reparations and the return of artifacts held by Vatican museums.
Francis’ week-long trip — which will take him to Edmonton; Quebec City and finally Iqaluit, Nunavut, in the far north — follows meetings he held in the spring at the Vatican with delegations from the First Nations, Metis and Inuit. Those meetings culminated with a historic April 1 apology for the “deplorable” abuses
Right now, many of
our people are skeptical and they
are hurt Grand Chief George Arcand Jr
committed by some Catholic missionaries in residential schools.
The Canadian Government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse were rampant in the state-funded Christian schools that operated from the 19th century to the 1970s. Some 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to attend in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes.
Then-prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology over the residential schools in 2008. As part of a lawsuit settlement involving the government, churches and about 90,000 surviving students, Canada paid reparations that amounted to billions of dollars being transferred to Indigenous communities.
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 had called for a papal apology to be delivered on Canadian soil, but it was only after the 2021 discovery of the possible remains of about 200 children at the former Kamloops residential school in British Columbia that the Vatican mobilised to comply with the request.
“I honestly believe that if it wasn’t for the discovery . . . and all the spotlight that was placed on the Oblates or the Catholic Church as well, I don’t think any of this would have happened,” said Raymond Frogner, head archivist at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Frogner just returned from Rome where he spent five days at the headquarters of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which operated 48 of the 139 Christian-run residential schools, the most of any Catholic order. After the graves were discovered, the Oblates finally offered “complete transparency and accountability” and allowed him into its headquarters to research the names of alleged sex abusers from a
single school in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan, he said.
The Inuit community, for its part, is seeking Vatican assistance to extradite a single Oblate priest, the Reverend Joannes Rivoire, who ministered to Inuit communities until he left in the 1990s and returned to France. Canadian authorities issued an arrest warrant for him in 1998 on accusations of several counts of sexual abuse.
Inuit leader Natan Obed personally asked Francis for the Vatican’s help in extraditing Rivoire, saying in March that it was one specific thing the Vatican could do to bring healing to his many victims.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said last week that he had no information on the case.
At a news conference on Sunday in Edmonton, organisers said they will do all they can to enable school survivors to attend the papal events, particularly for the Maskwacis apology and tomorrow’s gathering at Lac Ste Anne, long a popular pilgrimage site for Indigenous Catholics.
Both are in rural areas, and organisers are arranging shuttle transport from various park-and-ride lots. They noted that many survivors are now elderly and frail and may need accessible vehicle transport, diabeticfriendly snacks and other services.
The Reverend Cristino Bouvette, national liturgical coordinator for the papal visit, who is partly of Indigenous heritage, said he hopes the visit is healing for those who “have borne a wound, a cross that they have suffered with, in some cases for generations”.
Bouvette, a priest in the Diocese of Calgary, said the papal liturgical events will have strong Indigenous representation — including prominent roles for Indigenous clergy and the use of Native languages, music and motifs on liturgical vestments.
Bouvette said he’s doing this work in honour of his “kokum”, the Cree word for grandmother, who spent 12 years at a residential school in Edmonton.
She “could have probably never imagined those many years later that her grandson would be involved in this work”. —AP