Pope Francis in Canada with a mission to apologize to Indigenous people

Pope apologizes for ‘catastrophic’ school policy in Canada

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By David Carey, Religion Team Leader, Associated Press

 

Pope Francis in Maskwacis, in Alberta (AP) Canada

Pope Francis delivered a historic apology this week to Indigenous peoples for the abuses suffered at the hands of Catholic missionaries in Canada’s church-run residential schools. 

In fact, the Associated Press provided wall-to-wall coverage of this consequential papal trip on Canadian soil. 

Alongside top notch visual crews and an assist from Canadian bureau chief Rob Gillies, the religion team’s Peter Smith and AP Vatican expert, Nicole Winfield, were on the ground to document the pope’s arrival in Edmonton, Alberta, and his monumental request for forgiveness at the site of a former residential school. But the religion team’s work began before the papal plane touched down on Sunday. In anticipation of the pope’s arrival, Smith and Jessie Wardarski documented the hopes and concerns of Indigenous Canadians ahead of Francis’ apology. 

Pope Francis' coat of arms is the same one he adopted in Buenos Aires, with the addition of the papal symbols of a bishops' miter, and gold and silver-crossed keys....

Smith and Religion News Editor Holly Meyer explained further the modern phenomenon of the churches apologizing for past sins.

When Pope Francis apologized to the Indigenous groups on Canadian soil, he made another effort toward healing harms inflicted at church-run residential schools — and add to the Catholic Church’s growing ledger of atonement for past transgressions.

Like the papacy, top Protestant leaders also have gradually issued institutional mea culpas for their churches’ historical wrongs. Many of the apologies on behalf of Christian denominations are for grave offenses: genocide, sex abuse, slavery, war and more.

In Canada, Pope Francis’ words went beyond his earlier apology for the “deplorable” abuses committed by missionaries and instead took institutional responsibility for the church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” assimilation policy, which the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said amounted to a “cultural genocide.”