CANTON, New York (WWNY) – Pope Francis issued a historic apology for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations.
“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said.
More than 150,000 native children in Canada were forced to attend government-funded Christian schools from the 19th century until the 1970s in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes and culture. The aim was to Christianize and assimilate them into mainstream society, which previous Canadian governments considered superior.
Ottawa has admitted that physical and sexual abuse was rampant at the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages. That legacy of that abuse and isolation from family has been cited by Indigenous leaders as a root cause of the epidemic rates of alcohol and drug addiction now on Canadian reservations.
The discoveries of hundreds of potential burial sites at former schools in the past year drew international attention to the schools in Canada and their counterparts in the United States.
Catholic religious orders operated 66 of Canada’s 139 residential schools. The revelations prompted Francis to apologize on Canadian soil.
St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Canton, like many other Catholic churches in the north country, is watching Pope Francis’ visit to Canada this week. He’ll be in Quebec City Wednesday.
Father Bryan Stitt says papal visits are special.
“It’s a sign of great hope, a sign of that we are a part of something very big, something timeless, and that he comes so close, it touches the hearts of many,” said Father Stitt, St. Mary’s pastor.
Dr. Rose-Alma McDonald is a lay minister at the St. Regis Mission Church and a member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation. She says that while she appreciates the pope’s apology, the Catholic Church needs to do more to answer for the 100-plus years of abuse.
“If they’re going to apologize, then they need to invest in, you know, reconciliation and rebuilding our languages and our culture. I mean, whole languages were lost in Canada because they obliterated the language through the residential school system,” she said.
Father Stitt says the actions of the Church are not something that reflects the Catholic faith.
“The Church always has a responsibility of spreading the gospel, of sharing the gospel of Christ, but while that was hopefully a driving part, what – how it played out was in many ways just really abysmal,” he said.
Pope Francis will stay in Quebec until Thursday. From there he will travel to the city of Iqaluit in the Nunavut territory in the Arctic Circle where he will end his trip.
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