‘They were heroes and saints’: Campaign pushes back on how America was evangelized

Cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City / CNA

Washington D.C., Jun 29, 2021 / 16:01 pm (CNA).

Some Canadian bishops, along with Indigenous leaders, will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican in December 2021, according to the Canadian bishops’ conference.

The delegations of a “small” group of Canadian bishops, along with Indigenous First Nations, Inuit, and Métis leaders, will be scheduled for papal meetings at the Vatican from Dec. 17-20, 2021, “to foster meaningful encounters of dialogue and healing,” the Canadian bishops’ conference stated on Tuesday.

Pope Francis is inviting each group of Indigenous delegations – First Nations, Métis and Inuit – to a distinct meeting, the bishops said, praising “the Holy Father’s spirit of openness.”

First Nations communities are Indigenous peoples who lived south of the Arctic region in modern-day Canada, while Inuit peoples resided in the Arctic region. Métis communities share both Indigenous and European heritage.

All delegations will share a final audience with Pope Francis on Dec. 20. They will include Indigenous elders, residential school survivors, youth, and a small group of Bishops and Indigenous leaders,” the bishops’ conference said.

“Pope Francis is deeply committed to hearing directly from Indigenous Peoples, expressing his heartfelt closeness, addressing the impact of colonization and the role of the Church in the residential school system, in the hopes of responding to the suffering of Indigenous Peoples and the ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma,” the Canadian bishops’ conference announced in the statement.

“The Bishops of Canada reaffirm their sincere hope that these forthcoming encounters will lead to a shared future of peace and harmony between Indigenous Peoples and the Catholic Church in Canada,” they wrote.

The announcement comes after the recent discovery of unmarked graves of 215 Indigenous children at a former Catholic-run residential school in British Columbia.

That discovery on the weekend of May 22 prompted leaders of the Assembly of First Nations and the Métis National Council to plan a visit to the Vatican, with the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), to request a formal papal apology for the Church’s role in the residential school system.

At his June 6 Sunday angelus, Pope Francis expressed “sympathy” over the discovery of children’s remains, urged healing and reconciliation, and called for a “turn away from the colonizing model,” but he did not issue a formal apology. Other Canadian bishops have apologized for the Church’s role in the residential school system, including the bishops of Alberta in 2014 and, recently, the archbishops of Vancouver and Ottawa.

The residential school system was set up by the Canadian federal government, beginning in the 1870s, as a means of forcibly assimilating Indigenous children and stripping them of familial and cultural ties. Catholics and members of other Christian denominations ran the schools, although the Catholic Church or Catholics oversaw more than two-thirds of the schools. The last remaining federally-run residential school closed in 1996.

According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a Canadian body set up to investigate abuses in the schools, at least 4,100 children died from “disease or accident” at the schools. One of the commission’s calls was for a formal papal apology for the Church’s role in the residential school system.

At the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, the remains of 215 Indigenous children were discovered on the weekend of May 22 with ground-penetrating radar. It is unclear when or how the children died.

On June 24, Cowesses First Nation leaders announced that 751 unmarked graves had been discovered at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School.

One scholar who worked with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a report following the Kamloops discovery, explaining that the schools were historically underfunded and under-regulated by the federal government. More work is needed to accurately document the location of residential school cemeteries amid the recent discovery of unmarked graves, he wrote.

Dr. Scott Hamilton, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, wrote that the federal government for decades did not establish or implement proper health care and cemetery care regulations at the schools.

In at least some cases, the government had a policy of only paying for deceased residential school students to be transported home for funerals when the cost of transportation was less than the cost of a burial at a residential school, he noted. When the government took control of residential schools from religious groups in the late-20^th century, cemeteries and burial grounds were not adequately documented.

As a result, the locations of many cemeteries could fade from memory over time due to lack of regulation and documentation, Hamilton said, and individual grave markers could have been moved or succumbed to the elements.

[…]

Camagüey, Cuba, Jun 6, 2019 / 04:18 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of  Camagüey inaugurated the Archbishop Adolfo Home for the Elderly to serve the city’s seniors last month.

During the May 25 event, Archbishop Wilfredo Pino Estevez of Camagüey said the initiative shows how the Cuban state and Church can cooperate.

“I believe that the Public Health System and the Church have set an example of how we can work together to achieve a common good. And that is something we must continue to maintain,” the prelate said. He also encouraged the initiative “to be multiplied in other areas in which the Cuban Church and the state could work together.”

“In the end, we are all at the service of one and the same Cuban people,” he said.

The prelate highlighted the presence of the Camillian Sisters who will serve the elderly.

The home bears the name of Archbishop Adolfo Rodríguez Herrera, who led the diocese for 40 years. The facility took 13 years to build and constitutes a great achievement for the Church in Cuba.

The prelate also recalled the letter that Archbishop Rodriguez wrote 18 years ago addressed to a Cuban official about the project: “I wish to take the opportunity to reiterate to you that the Church does not seek to compete nor to overshadow other institutions of this kind. For centuries (and in Cuba for 500 years), the Church, by a mandate from Jesus Christ, has raised up the first schools, hospitals, leprosariums, and asylums, when there was no one to compete with nor to eclipse. Experience, also in Camagüey, before and now, shows that a school, a hospital, an asylum… does not compete, rather it stimulates, establishes a healthy emulation that benefits everyone. A Home for the Elderly, is not a productive business but an under appreciated service for a very difficult stage in life which is old age.”

Archbishop Pino commented: “All of us who knew him will never forget the saintly bishop who taught us, in word and deed  to always trust in the Lord, a conviction that made him a serene and positive being even in the dark and difficult hours of our history!”

He likewise recognized the support of “so many people and institutions, inside and outside the country, who, with their financial contributions according to their means, made this construction possible.” He also thanked the lay people, deacons, priests, sisters and others others who got involved and helped the project go forward.

“Thanks for the example you gave us in reminding us that this work does not belong to one group but of all of you!”

Also present at the dedication was the Bishop Domingo Oropesa Lorente of Cienfuegos, whom Pino also thanked for the efforts he made benefiting this great work.

[…]

Missionaries of Charity leave Nicaragua on July 6, 2022. / Credit: P. Sunil Kumar Adugula

ACI Prensa Staff, Jul 31, 2023 / 16:30 pm (CNA).
Researcher and lawyer Martha Patricia Molina, a member of the editorial board of the newspaper La Prensa,… […]