Assembly of First Nations National Chief Bellegarde said today that while there are no “guarantees,” he and other Indigenous leaders are hoping Pope Francis agrees to come to Canada to issue a public apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential schools after they meet with him at the Vatican in December.
“The meeting has been confirmed at the Vatican so we are going to take that meeting and then … at that time take the opportunity to invite his Holiness back to Canada at some point in the future,” said Bellegarde this afternoon.
“There are no guarantees of any kind of apology or anything going forward. There is no guarantee that he’ll even come back to Canada, but we have to make the attempt and we have to seize the opportunity.”
First Nations, Métis and Inuit leaders will meet with the Pope separately between December 17 and 20, culminating in a final papal audience on Dec. 20 with the entire Indigenous delegation.
The trip was supposed to have happened already, but the pandemic delayed those plans.
In an interview with CBC News Wednesday, Winnipeg Archbishop Richard Gagnon suggested bishops in Canada could make a decision on whether to invite the Pope to Canada at the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishop’s (CCCB) annual meeting this September.
Gagnon, who serves as president of the CCCB, told CBC News Tuesday that Pope Francis is open to delivering an apology in Canada at an “opportune time.”
He said the Pope is expected to take a path similar to the one that led to his formal apology in Bolivia in 2015.
In Bolivia, Pope Francis apologized for sins and crimes committed by the church against Indigenous peoples during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas.
Bellegarde noted that the Roman Catholic Church remains the only institution that has not yet made a formal apology for its role in operating more than half of all residential schools in Canada on the federal government’s behalf.
Some Catholic entities in Canada have apologized, but the Vatican has not.
Pope Benedict XVI expressed “sorrow” to a delegation from Canada’s Assembly of First Nations in 2009 over the abuse and “deplorable” treatment that residential school students suffered.
“[The Roman Catholic Church] made apologies to the Irish people, they made apologies to the Indigenous people in Bolivia. And so, I think the spirit will move in the appropriate way and the appropriate time when things happen here in Canada,” said Bellegarde.
In advance of the December meetings, Bellegarde urged the Vatican to start sharing any data or documents the Catholic Church has on residential schools — especially information related to the unmarked graves that have been discovered at several former residential schools in recent weeks.
Gagnon said the Pope can’t instruct Catholic entities to hand over records.
Bellegarde spoke to reporters just hours after a First Nation in B.C.’s South Interior said it had discovered 182 unmarked grave sites near the location of a former residential school.
The discovery adds to a growing list of hundreds of unmarked graves reported at former residential schools in Canada.
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