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The first three papal visits to Canada — by John Paul II in 1984, 1987 and 2002 — served as celebrations of the Catholic faith.
But there will be little to celebrate during the tour of Pope Francis, which starts Sunday.
Each stop in the pared-down itinerary of the frail, 85-year-old pontiff will dredge up decades of painful memories in the hope of bringing Indigenous peoples and residential school survivors one step closer to a state of healing and reconciliation.
Pope Francis intends to fulfil a pledge to apologize for the actions of the Catholic Church while it ran dozens of residential schools across the country — places where Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families, barred from speaking their language or practising their culture, physically, psychologically and sexually abused and, in some cases, buried without word or explanation to their shattered families.
“Traumas suffered in the past take a long time to heal,” says Marjolaine Étienne, president of the advocacy group Quebec Native Women.
Étienne will be attending events in Quebec City with her 80-year-old mother, who as a young girl spent years apart from her family at a residential school on Hudson Bay in northern Quebec, 1,000 kilometres from her community of Mashteuiatsh.
“Some survivors have healed,” she said. “Others are still in the process.”
The words that Pope Francis utters on Canadian soil could go a long way to helping heal generations of pain, but significant questions hang over how the visit will unfold.
These are some of those questions.
What will the Pope say, exactly?
If there is any suspense surrounding the Pope’s visit to Canada, it is due to this question, which is both straightforward and yet complex.
Pope Francis himself has referred to his trip as a “penitential pilgrimage.” In other words, the head of the Roman Catholic Church intends to make an expression of repentance for the past sins committed against Indigenous people by Catholic clergy who ran dozens of Canadian residential schools.
The Vatican hasn’t given any indication of how he intends to do this, but Francis has a personal reputation as “The People’s Pontiff” with a soft spot for the vulnerable people of this world, a leader not afraid of bringing change to his often ultra-conservative institution.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation says that survivors are looking for “an apology that leads to sincere, significant and immediate action towards reparations and ending the ongoing harm caused by institutions within the church.”
But didn’t he already apologize?
After a meeting in Rome with a committee of residential school survivors in the spring, Pope Francis did indeed make a public speech in which he apologized for “the deplorable conduct of those members of the Catholic Church.”
“I ask for God’s forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart: I am very sorry.”
So what more can he, or will he, do?
For one, Pope Francis will be reiterating his apology on Canadian soil and, in Alberta, at the former Ermineskin Residential School. In Edmonton, Quebec City and Iqaluit, he’ll also be meeting personally with residential school survivors.
“The expectations are high,” said Étienne, of Quebec Native Women. “It’s been difficult both or those who attended residential schools and for the successive generations of family members who have lived with the damages.
“Everyone is different,” said Grand Chief Rémy Vincent of the Huron Wendake Nation, near Quebec City. “There are those who only need to hear the apology and there are others who need more than that.”
But the Pope himself has invited expectation. In the spring, he admitted: “any truly effective process of healing requires concrete actions.”
In that spirit, the National Indian Residential School Circle of Survivors recently published a draft statement for the Pope, suggesting he offer reparations, restitution and a renunciation of the 15th-century Doctrine of Discovery.
The Doctrine of What?
The Doctrine of Discovery. It’s the legal framework, based in part on a papal edict dating from 1493, the year after Christopher Columbus “discovered” America and claimed it for Spain.
In addition to a previous edict 1455, the Papal Bulls, as they are known, allowed European countries to claim discovery and ownership of land in the name of their king or queen if it was inhabited by non-Christians.
To this day, the Doctrine of Discovery provides the legal underpinning for the federal government’s claim to rule over sovereign Canadian territory.
The Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation report of 2015 called on faith groups and religious denominations to renounce the doctrine, which was used to drive Indigenous people off their ancestral land onto reserves and, later, force Indigenous children into residential schools.
The Anglican and United churches have already done so. The Catholic Church, as yet, has not.
And what about restitution?
The federal government has already paid more than $4.8 billion in compensation to residential school students while also committing another $205 million for three funds dealing with healing, truth and reconciliation, and commemoration.
The Catholic Church was ordered in the Residential School Settlement Agreement to use its “best efforts” to create a $25-million healing and reconciliation fund for former residential school students, but it ended up raising just $4 million.
Last fall, the church announced a new plan to raise $30 million in five years for an Indigenous Reconciliation Fund that would pay for projects supporting healing and reconciliation. As of this week, $4.6 million had been raised.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation says that if the Catholic Church truly wants to atone, it must “help restore everything that was torn down — especially the languages, spiritual practices and cultural traditions and supporting communities to heal in ways that are authentic and true to their needs.”
What about getting justice for victims?
Efforts are ongoing to identify the victims as well as the abusers.
In Kamloops, about 200 potential unmarked graves were discovered at the site of a former residential school. Now the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation is preparing to exhume, identify and rebury the bodies closer to the homes they were taken from and in accordance with their traditions.
A similar search for unmarked graves is intended on Fort George Island, where five residential schools operated in northern Quebec.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is also delving into the archives of the Catholic Church to identify individuals who worked at residential schools and what happened there.
Last week, the centre completed an initial review of the archives of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Rome and it has identified internal records, the daily logs of former residential schools and the names of 400 priests and 1,000 students — information that will be used in the longer-term efforts to document and further investigate the residential school experiences of young Indigenous people.
How is the tour taking shape?
The high stakes of this event bring with them high sensitivities.
On Thursday, Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald released a letter accusing tour organizers of planning the visit without consulting First Nations groups.
“This visit and apology has evolved to be more for the benefit of Canadian Catholic parishioners and the global Christian community and less about actual moves for reparations and reconciliation with the First Nation community that was harmed by institutions of assimilation and genocide,” the letter said.
In an interview, Grand Chief Vincent also complained about the absence of collaboration by organizers.
“There were invitations made to people to participate at certain events who had no business being there,” he said. “From our side we applied pressure, as did the Assembly of First Nations and it’s OK now. The changes have been made.”
Most recently, he said that papal tour organizers have consulted each of the nations and communities to know how many tickets were required and who would be present at a mass in Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré.
“It’s important that it be the survivors,” Vincent said. “They’re the ones who have to be at the heart of the event.”
AFN National Chief Archibald said she was speaking out just days before the Pope’s arrival to ensure that the intended reconciliation does not leave a bitter taste.
“The anticipated apology potentially represents a monumental moment for us and may serve to help put our shared collective pain behind us. What we need to do, then, is to acknowledge it together and work together in a spirit of true collaboration on the healing path forward.”
Will the apology be accepted?
There is good reason to be suspicious of a Catholic Church that has historically put the protection of its members ahead of victims’ well-being, but First Nations, Inuit and Métis groups are approaching the papal visit in a spirit of openness and hope.
The words and gestures Pope Francis offers on Canadian soil will be parsed and closely examined both for what they reveal and admit about the church’s activities as for what they hold back and obscure.
But whatever comes out of his mouth next week, and whatever enters the ears of the residential school survivors in attendance, including the mother of Marjolaine Étienne, one thing is clear: it is just one more step in a long process of making amends for generations of trauma.
“These are people with a lot of resilience,” said Étienne, “and they learned how to be able to live with this pain without forgetting it.”
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