*** Justin Trudeau’s criticism of the government echoes claims from indigenous communities, who pointed out that the pontiff did not mention sexual abuse by students at boarding schools.
The Canadian government described Pope Francis’ apology to Indigenous peoples for misbehavior at church-used boarding schools in the country as inadequate, and suggested that reconciliation around the painful history is largely a work in progress. grade.
Criticism of the government is echoed by some survivors, who point out that Francis had omitted any reference to sexual abuse by Indigenous children in schools and that, initially, he was reluctant to declare that the Catholic Church was an institution. As was the responsibility in this case. happened.
According to the Associated Press agency, the government’s official response was issued when they arrived in Quebec to meet with the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and the governor general, Mary Simon, at the official’s residence in that city, which is located on top of the fort. Citadel is. On a hill, on the second leg of the Pope’s week-long visit to Canada.
Francis has said he is making an “atonement pilgrimage” to atone for the church’s role in the boarding school system, in which generations of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and forced to go to government-funded institutions. was forced to. Church and government assimilate them into the Canadian society of Christianity. The Canadian government has said that physical and sexual abuse was frequent in schools, with students being beaten up for speaking their native language.
The pope on Monday apologized for the “evil” of the school’s church staff and the “devastating” consequences of the school system in Indigenous families. On Wednesday, in a speech to government officials, Francis reiterated his apology and denounced the school system, saying it was “disappointing”.
The pontiff noted that the system was “promoted by the government officials of the time” as part of a policy of assimilation and emancipation. But in response to the criticism, he said that “many local Catholic institutions were involved.”
role of church
Indigenous peoples have long demanded that the Pope bear responsibility not only for the abuses committed by certain Catholic clergy and religious orders, but also for the Catholic Church’s institutional support for assimilation policies, and the papal religious for European colonials in the fifteenth century. Take responsibility for justification. Expansion for the propagation of Christianity.
More than 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their homes in the 19th century through the 1970s and placed in schools in an attempt to isolate them from the influence of their families and culture.
Trudeau, a Catholic whose father, Pierre Trudeau, was prime minister when the last boarding schools were still in operation, insisted that the Catholic Church, as an institution, tolerate guilt and need to atone for it. Should do more.
In words before Francis, Trudeau stressed that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission requested in 2015 that the Pope apologize on Canadian soil and that Francis’ visit “would not be possible without courage and perseverance.” , Inuit and Métis, who had traveled to the Vatican a few months earlier and pressed for their apology.
Trudeau declared, “I apologize for the role that the Catholic Church, as an institution, played in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical and sexual abuse of indigenous children in church-run boarding schools. “
The Canadian government has already apologized for its role in the schools’ legacy. In 2008, then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a formal apology in parliament for boarding schools, saying they were a sad chapter in Canadian history and noting that the policy of forced assimilation had done much harm.
second month of francis
Pope Francis confirmed this Thursday that abuses against Indigenous Canadians at some of the 139 boarding schools that have operated in the country for nearly a century were a wound to the “Body of Christ” and, its second in the North American country. Celebrating the Mass, raised that the attitudes of the Christians involved represented a “scam of evil”.
“What has happened?, Why has it happened?, How can this happen? Brothers and sisters, these are questions that each of us asks ourselves; and they are also burning issues that the Pilgrim Church in Canada is facing. resonate in his heart, in this difficult path of healing and reconciliation that he is leading,” said the pontiff from the Sanctuary of St. Anne de Beaupre in Quebec.
In front of 1,400 people inside the sanctuary, mostly indigenous for whom the organizers reserved 70 percent of tickets, and another 15,000 people, the Pope once again showed his closeness to a place of strong representation for Catholicism from across North America. In which about one lakh people make pilgrimage every year.
In the pilgrims who came around the sanctuary, the area known as the “Plains of Abraham”, Telam spoke with members of the Mashteutash indigenous community, who walked 275 kilometers a week to listen to the pontiff.
“It was teamwork, each one walked as many kilometers as we could, and we supported each other to listen to the pope and think together with other communities,” said one of the leaders, J. Launire-Mathias, of A group unified by survivors of the Pointe-Blue boarding school about arrival, which closed in 1991.
Francisco’s reflection was given in continuation with a request for pardons to the country’s natives for the role of Christians in the residential school system active from 1883 to 1996, in which cases of physical, psychological and sexual abuse were reported. Marking the native child and papal visit to Canada.
“We too, before the scandal of evil and before the body of Christ wounded in the flesh of our indigenous brethren, have plunged ourselves into bitterness and feel the weight of the fall,” Francis deepened in that direction. Page 12/Houndiary
