Vatican, July 24 (BNA): Pope Francis began a charged visit to Canada on Sunday to apologize to indigenous peoples for abuses committed by missionaries in boarding schools, a key step in the Catholic Church’s efforts to reconcile with indigenous communities and help them recover from them. The Associated Press (AP) reported that generations of trauma.
Francis was heading to Edmonton, Alberta, where he was greeted on the tarmac by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary May Simon, Canada’s first Aboriginal governor-general. Francis did not have any official events scheduled for Sunday, allowing him time to rest before his Monday meeting with survivors near the site of a former residential school in Maskwacis, where he is expected to offer an apology.
On the papal plane, Francis told reporters that this was a “journey of penance” and urged prayer in particular for the elderly and grandparents.
Indigenous groups They are looking for more than just wordsDespite this, as they press for access to church archives to find out the fate of children who never return home from boarding schools. They also want justice for the abusers, monetary compensation, and Return of the original artifacts Held by the Vatican Museums.
“This apology confirms our experiences and creates an opportunity for the Church to mend relations with indigenous peoples around the world,” said Grand President George Arcand Jr., of the Sixth Treaty Union. But he stressed: “It doesn’t end here – there’s a lot to be done. It’s a start.”
Francis’ week-long trip – which will take him to Edmonton; Quebec City and finally Iqaluit and Nunavut in the far north – following meetings he had in the spring at the Vatican with delegations from First Nations, Metis and Inuit. those meetings It culminated in a historic apology on April 1. Because of the “unfortunate” abuses committed by some Catholic missionaries in boarding schools.
The Canadian government acknowledged the prevalence of physical and sexual abuse in state-funded Christian schools that operated from the 19th century to the 1970s. About 150,000 Aboriginal children were taken from their families and forced to attend in an attempt to isolate them from the influence of their indigenous homes, languages and cultures and to integrate them into the Canadian Christian community.
The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission called in 2015 for a papal apology on Canadian soil, but that didn’t happen until after 2021 Discover the remains of about 200 Children at a former Kamloops residential school in British Columbia mobilized by the Vatican to comply with the request.
“I honestly think that had it not been for the discovery … and all the spotlight that has been shed on Oblates or the Catholic Church as well, I don’t think any of this would have happened,” said Raymond Frogner, head of the archives department at the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, which serves as a resource across Internet to search for boarding schools.
Frogner had just returned from Rome where he spent five days at the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which ran 48 of the 139 Christian-run boarding schools, more than any Catholic school. After the graves were discovered, the Oplits family finally offered “full transparency and accountability” and allowed him into their headquarters to search the names of alleged sex offenders from one school in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan, he said.
While there, he found 1,000 original black and white photographs of the schools and their students, with inscriptions on the back, which he said would be of great value to survivors and their families in the hope of finding traces of their loved ones. He said Oblates had agreed on a joint project to digitize the images and make them available online.
The Inuit community, for its part, is Seeking help from the Vatican to hand over one stabbed priest, Reverend Joannes Revoir, who served the Inuit communities until he left in the 1990s and returned to France. Canadian authorities issued an arrest warrant for him in 1998 on several counts of sexual abuse, but it was never reported.
Inuit leader Nathan Ophid personally asked Francis to help the Vatican hand Revoire, telling the Associated Press in March that this was one specific thing the Vatican could do to bring healing to many of its victims.
Then he said, “This is part of the journey of reconciliation that we are going on together.”
Asked about the request, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said last week that he had no information on the case.
Meanwhile, at a press conference Saturday in Edmonton, organizers said they will do everything in their power to enable school survivors access to papal events, particularly regarding Maskwacis’ apology and Tuesday’s gathering at Lac Ste. Anne, a famous pilgrimage site for indigenous Catholics for a long time.
Both are in rural areas, and the organizers arrange shuttles from the various car parks and rides. They noted that many survivors are now elderly and frail and may need accessible transportation, diabetes-friendly snacks, and other services.
Reverend Cristino Buffett, the national liturgical coordinator of the papal visit, who is partly of Indigenous heritage, said he hopes the visit will heal those who “have suffered a wound, a cross they have suffered, in some cases for generations.” . “
Buffett, a priest in the Diocese of Calgary, said papal liturgical events will have a strong representation of Aboriginal people – including the prominent roles of indigenous clergy and the use of indigenous languages, music and motifs on liturgical clothing.
Buffett said he’s doing this work in particular in honor of his grandmother “kokum,” the Cree word for his grandmother, who spent 12 years at a boarding school in Edmonton. “She probably would have never imagined those many years later that her grandson would be involved in this business.”
AOQ