Papal apology over residential schools should have been a no-brainer

A simple apology. Nothing more. It’s right above “doing nothing” as feel-good optics go, because it’s quite literally the “least” you can do if you choose to do nothing. And yet for approximately 150,000 First Nation, Metis, and Inuit people victimized by the Catholic Church in residential schools, that simple apology from Pope Francis continues to remain elusive.

A Papal apology was one of the many recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) – and publicly endorsed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — as a key step in moving the healing process along. While the Catholic Church has apologized to Irish victims of sexual abuse and to victims of colonialism in South America in the past, the most that Indigenous people have received so far over residential schools has been an expression of “sorrow” from Pope Benedict XVI back in 2009.

Catholic Church played key role in Canada’s residential schools

Almost two-thirds of Canada’s 130 residential schools were run by the Catholic Church. Considering the atrocities (the physical, sexual, and psychological abuse perpetuated at the hands of nuns and priests and other religious staff members), committed in the name of “beating the Indian” out of Indigenous children and aggressively converting them to Christianity, you would think that a formal apology would be an undisputable no-brainer. At least 6,000 children are believed to have died at these schools from disease and abuse. Just the horrors at St. Anne’s Residential School alone would be enough to merit an apology, and yet astonishingly, it continues to be withheld.

While Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches were also involved in running residential schools, they all apologized for their actions decades ago, which incidentally makes Conservative leader and devout Catholic Andrew Scheer’s statement that “many faiths must apologize for injustices of residential schools” nonsensical and misleading. They already have, Mr. Scheer. It’s only your church that has failed to do so. Speaking of the Conservatives, Scheer’s predecessor, Stephen Harper also apologized for residential schools on behalf of the Government of Canada back in 2008. It’s the Catholic Church that remains firm on not extending the most basic of gestures.

In a bizarre interview with the CBC, Father Thomas Rosica, CEO of the Salt & Light Catholic Media Foundation, recently stated that the Pope “isn’t going to be used simply to apologize for a matter that has been carefully studied reflected upon and it is responsibility of the local churches where these things happen.”

It’s fascinating to me that the spiritual leader and supreme head of the Catholic Church is suddenly “not responsible” for what the local churches do, when we all know that every word uttered by him and every intervention of his reverberates around the world and often impacts how governments of countries with devoutly religious populations conduct themselves. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t yield incredible influence worldwide and at the same time abdicate responsibility that comes with it when it doesn’t suit you. Having a priest say “no government tells the Pope what to say” is unnecessary and counterproductive. This isn’t about a government appeal. This is about admitting responsibility and wrong-doing to your victims (many of which are members of your Christian flock) and formally apologizing for a cultural genocide that deeply brutalized Indigenous communities and whose horrific repercussions continue to remain visible today.

Politicians and Indigenous leaders disappointed

“Sorrow is never enough. One has to take responsibility for the harm that was done,” said Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett in response to the Vatican’s reluctance to issue an apology. In reaction to the recent news, the NDP has decided to table a motion in the House of Commons calling on Pope Francis to apologize for the abuse suffered by Indigenous children at Indian residential schools, according to a letter sent by the federal party's MPs Monday to the Prime Minister. The motion also calls for the Catholic Church to pay the reparations it promised and still owes. Senator Murray Sinclair, who was the chair of the TRC, has repeatedly mentioned in numerous interviews that the Catholic Church has never made good on its promise to raise $25 million for residential school survivor healing programs, an amount it had agreed upon as part of the 2006 settlement agreement. Many question whether the Pope’s reluctance to issue a formal apology stems from ongoing litigation and whether the Vatican worries that an apology would open the Church up to additional financial liability. Any which way you look at it, the reluctance to issue one is disappointing, deeply disrespectful, and comes off as terribly self-serving. It’s also terribly un-Christian.

In the meantime, while the affable Pope Francis offers us glimpses here and there of attempts to modernize the Church, the institution continues to dabble in the irrelevant and the archaic, like recently increasing their exorcism training because there’s “been a rise in possessions – something they consider a “pastoral emergency.” Seriously? With everything going on in the world, too many people being possessed by the Devil is the real emergency?

After the Pope was recently quoted as telling an Italian journalist that “there is no hell,” the Vatican immediately issued a clarification, explaining that he had been misquoted and that – rest assured, everyone — there is indeed a place where sinners go to suffer eternal damnation.

It continues to baffle me that the slow-moving Vatican can so quickly issue a panicked press release about the existence of purgatory, while they remain reluctant and evasive in admitting any wrongdoing regarding the personal hell they helped create for thousands of Indigenous people right here on Earth.

Isn’t hypocrisy a sin according to the Bible?