Pope apologizes to Indigenous

MASKWACIS, Alberta — Pope Francis has apologized for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s “devastating” policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed their families and marginalized generations in ways still being felt today.

“I am deeply sorry — sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said in his native Spanish.

He addressed his comments to several thousand residential school survivors in a grass field encircled by a small grandstand on the first full day of a trip aimed at penitence for one of Canada’s greatest tragedies: a school system that forcibly removed Indigenous children from their parents and tried to assimilate them into Euro-Christian society — often brutally. Students were forbidden from speaking their native languages or practicing traditional customs; many were physically or sexually abused.

“It is painful to think of how the firm soil of values, language and culture that made up the authentic identity of your peoples was eroded, and that you have continued to pay the price of this,” Francis said.

“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said near the site of the former Ermineskin Indian Residential School, now largely torn down, on lands of four Cree nations south of Edmonton, Alberta.

His use of the word “sorry” twice drew cheers and applause. He briefly donned a feathered headdress that was given to him after his remarks, drawing louder cheers.

The long-awaited apology opened Francis’ weeklong “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada, which is meant to help the church on its path of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and help victims heal.

Francis’ words Monday went beyond his earlier apology for the “deplorable” acts of missionaries and instead took responsibility for the church’s institutional cooperation with the “catastrophic” assimilation policy, which Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said amounted to a “cultural genocide.”

Clasping his hands under his chin, Francis prayed at the cemetery near the site of the former school before being escorted by four chiefs to a gathering of thousands of Indigenous peoples. After a traditional Indigenous hand drummer played and sang to welcome Francis, the pope prayed in silence and the sun peeked out after a morning of rain.

One of the hosts of the event, Chief Randy Ermineskin of the Ermineskin Cree Nation, waited for the pope in a nearby parking lot and took stock of the historic importance of the day.

“My late family members are not here with us any more, my parents went to residential school, I went to residential school,” he told reporters, dressed in a traditional feathered Cree headdress. “I know they’re with me, they’re listening, they’re watching.”

Many in the crowd wore traditional dress, including ribbon skirts and vests with Native motifs. Others donned orange shirts, which have become a symbol of residential school survivors, recalling the story of one woman who recalled that she had her favorite orange shirt, given by her grandmother, confiscated upon arrival at a residential school and replaced with a uniform.

On arrival Sunday in Alberta’s capital, Edmonton, Francis was greeted by representatives of Canada’s three main Indigenous groups — First Nations, Metis and Inuit — along with political and church dignitaries. At the welcome ceremony, Francis kissed the hand of a survivor of a residential school, Elder Alma Desjarlais of the Frog Lake First Nations, a gesture of humility and deference that he has used in the past when meeting with Holocaust survivors.

The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse were rampant in the government-funded Christian schools that operated from the 19th century to the 1970s. Some 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to attend in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes, languages and cultures and assimilate them into Canada’s Christian society.

Catholic religious orders operated 66 of Canada’s 139 residential schools, where thousands of children died from disease, fire and other causes.

Francis’ six-day trip — which will also include other sites in Alberta, as well as Quebec City and Iqaluit, Nunavut, in the far north — follows meetings he held in the spring at the Vatican with delegations from the First Nations, Metis and Inuit. Those meetings culminated with a historic April 1 apology for the “deplorable” abuses committed by some Catholic missionaries in residential schools.

The first pope from the Americas was determined to make the trip, even though torn knee ligaments forced him to cancel a visit earlier this month to Africa. Francis, 85, has called it a “penitential pilgrimage” to help the Catholic Church reconcile with Native peoples and help them heal from what Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said was “cultural genocide.”

That same commission report called on Francis to apologize for the abuses on Canadian soil, a request he is fulfilling with the trip.

Thousands of children died of disease, fire and other causes. The discoveries of hundreds of potential burial sites at former schools in the past year has drawn international attention to the legacy of the schools in Canada and their counterparts in the United States.

Maskwacis, about an hour south of Edmonton, is the hub of four Cree nations.

Event organizers said they would do everything possible to make sure survivors can attend the event. Many will travel from park-and-ride lots, and organizers acknowledge that many survivors are elderly and will require accessible vehicles, diabetic-friendly snacks and other amenities.

Catholics operated a majority of the Canadian schools, while various Protestant denominations operated others in cooperation with the government.

As part of a lawsuit settlement involving the government, churches and approximately 90,000 surviving students, Canada paid reparations that amounted to billions of dollars being transferred to Indigenous communities. Canada’s Catholic Church says its dioceses and religious orders have provided more than $50 million in cash and in-kind contributions, and hope to add $30 million more over the next five years.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who last year voiced an apology for the “incredibly harmful government policy” in organizing the residential school system, also attended the Maskwacis event along with other government officials.

In Maskwacis, the former school where Francis is visiting has been replaced with a school system operated by the four local Cree nations. The curriculum affirms the Indigenous culture that was once suppressed.

Desjarlais of the Frog Lake First Nation in northern Alberta, a school survivor, said after the pope’s arrival Sunday that there are “mixed emotions across this country” over his visit.

“I think today of the young people that didn’t make it home and are buried around residential schools,” he told a news conference after the airport welcome ceremony. But he expressed optimism that the visit can begin to bring reconciliation.

“I do know when two people have apologized we feel better,” he said. “But our people have been through a lot. … Our people have been traumatized. Some of them didn’t make it home. Now I hope the world will see why our people are so hurt.”

Later Monday, Francis visited Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples, an Edmonton parish whose sanctuary was dedicated last week after being restored from a fire. The church incorporates Indigenous language and customs in liturgy, and both were on display during the event, with folk songs and drums and providing the backdrop to the pope’s visit.

BEYOND THE APOLOGY

For Indigenous listeners, the event touched off a reflection that quickly moved beyond the apology to concerns about Indigenous relations with the Canadian government and what might happen next. It made many think of their fragile communities, about addiction and suicide and other aspects of trauma and how many people who had been desperate for an apology never got to hear one.

“About 80% of my classmates are in their graves,” said Ermineskin, chief of the Ermineskin Cree Nation.

“Part of me is rejoiced. Part of me is sad,” said Evelyn Korkmaz, a residential school survivor. “But I’m glad I lived long enough to have witnessed this apology.”

The last residential schools closed in the 1990s, but the colonialist ideas that underpinned the school system continue to provoke a reckoning in the Roman Catholic Church. Francis, the first South American pope, comes from a continent where Christianity was introduced by conquerors. During a 2015 trip to Bolivia, he apologized for the church’s “grave sins” during colonialism and for crimes committed against native people.

Francis has offered apologies at several points in his pontificate — most notably, before Monday, for sexual abuse in the church. His most personal apology was in a 2018 letter to Chilean bishops, in which he acknowledged what he said were his own “serious errors” in handling a sex abuse scandal. In Ireland that year, after a national reckoning over widespread clerical abuse, he asked for forgiveness for “abuse of power, the abuse of conscience and sexual abuse on the part of representatives of the church.”

The Ermineskin residential school, when it operated, was one of the largest in Canada. In testimony before the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools, former Ermineskin students described days marked by loneliness, fear and abuse. One said she was told that the Sun Dance, an Indigenous ceremony, amounted to devil worship.

Marilyn Buffalo told the commission that teachers called the children “savage.”

Overcrowding and outbreaks of diseases, including measles, hepatitis and diphtheria, were common. A 1940s survey found that one-third of the students had tuberculosis and suggested they be sent to the hospital. Instead, some were sent home and others were kept under observation.

In 1966, a supervisor at Ermineskin wrote to the chief superintendent of education at the federal Department of Indian Affairs to report that priests were whipping girls with straps on their “bare bottoms.” She included the testimony of two students. She was dismissed.

At least 15 children died or went missing at the Ermineskin school during its operation, according to the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation.

Victor Buffalo was 7 years old and spoke no English when he was sent to Ermineskin. Buffalo, who is a cousin of Marilyn Buffalo, told The Washington Post that school administrators withheld food as punishment and whipped him frequently for speaking his native Cree.

After one such beating in front of his friends, Buffalo, who later became a chief of the Samson Cree Nation in Alberta, retreated to a nearby bathroom to cry — not because he was in physical pain, he said, but because his mother and father weren’t there to care for him.

Buffalo said his relationship with his parents, who also attended residential schools, was strained for many decades after he left the school in 1961. Severing ties to Indigenous culture, including familial ones, was an aim of the system.

“The greatest thing that we lost was love,” Buffalo said ahead of Francis’s visit. “The love of a family, the love of a mother, the love of a father.”

Information for this article was contributed by Rob Gillies and Holly Meyer of The Associated Press as well as Chico Harlan and Amanda Coletta of The Washington Post.

    Pope Francis arrives for a meeting with indigenous communities, including First Nations, Metis and Inuit, at Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church in Maskwacis, near Edmonton, Canada, Monday, July 25, 2022. Pope Francis begins a “penitential” visit to Canada to beg forgiveness from survivors of the country’s residential schools, where Catholic missionaries contributed to the “cultural genocide” of generations of Indigenous children by trying to stamp out their languages, cultures and traditions. Francis set to visit the cemetery at the former residential school in Maskwacis. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)  

 Gallery: Pope apologizes for ‘catastrophic’ school policy in Canada