Children outside of St. Paul’s Indian Residential School
Photo Courtesy of Museum of North Vancouver
CANADA – Pope Francis has arrived in Canada and is set to apologize to Indigenous communities for the Catholic church’s involvement in the residential school system. Residential schools operated in Canada from the 1880s into the late 1990s and saw tens of thousands of Indigenous children taken from their families and sent to institutions across Canada, many of whom never returned home.
The pope arrived in Canada over the weekend and is set to meet with Metis, Inuit, and First Nations people in Maskwacis, south of Edmonton, today. Maskwacis was home to the former Ermineskin Residential School.
“Dear brothers and sisters of #Canada, I come among you to meet the Indigenous peoples. I hope, with God’s grace, that my penitential pilgrimage might contribute to the journey of reconciliation already undertaken. Please accompany me with #prayer.” Francis wrote on Twitter on July 24th.
Online, some people have expressed their happiness with the pope’s visit.
“Pope Francis. You have been the best Pope in my lifetime. You care, like Jesus, about the working man, the poor, and the disadvantaged. You seem to care about reconciliation with the First Nations of Canada. We shall see how you can reconcile in Canada,” said one person.
“Thank you for coming. Please help our survivors heal and show the youth the joy of your message,” said another.
While others feel that the apology is not enough.
“Nah, we’re good, thanks. Some things can’t be apologized for. God will judge the guilty,” one person responded to the pope’s Sunday tweet.
“I too have many opinions on the Pope’s visit. I don’t need to share them. Fellow settlers, it’s not about us. Amplify Indigenous voices. Give space to survivors. Take a step back. Learn,” Alberta MLA Janis Irwin wrote on Twitter.
“And how much is this bit of political theatre costing Canadians? Even if the Vatican were acting in good faith here and paying their way I’d say thanks but no thanks,” someone else tweeted.
In May of 2021, 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children were discovered on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. This sparked a call for officials to search other former residential school campuses, which in turn led to the discovery of thousands of more unmarked graves across Canada.
