Pope Francis made a crescendo visit to Canadian soil to apologize to Indigenous people who suffered assaults and traumas inscribed in their collective unconscious during their forced stay in residential schools, once run by the clergy.
Cautious at first, the pope asked “humbly for forgiveness” for the evil committed by “Christians” upon his arrival in Alberta. His initial apology was deemed promising but incomplete. Essentially, Francis did not acknowledge at the outset that Indigenous children had been sexually abused at the hands of clergy in residential schools. Although he expressed regret for the projects of “cultural destruction and forced assimilation” of the natives, he evaded the responsibility of the Church as an institution, in addition to ignoring the question of cultural genocide, although named as such in the powerful report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
At the end of the papal journey, we can now take a complete look at this journey. In Quebec, Pope Francis finally asked for forgiveness from all victims of sexual assaults committed by members of the Catholic Church in Canada. God knows there were many, among natives and non-natives. “The pain and shame we feel must become an opportunity for conversion: never again! ” he said.
In an interview with Radio-Canada, Alain Bouchard, lecturer at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at Laval University, underlined the importance of this declaration for the Canadian clergy. He now has the mandate to engage in “an irreversible fight” against pedophiles in cassocks.
This atypical pope, who is entering the home stretch of his pontificate, also invited the Christian communities to no longer allow themselves to be contaminated by the idea that one culture is superior to another and that it is legitimate to use means of coercion against others. Colonialism and ethnocentrism, which made possible the creation of residential schools, still exist in this unequal world.
There is still much work to be done in the Vatican to revoke the Doctrine of Discovery, a half-millennium-old papal edict under which explorers were granted the divine right to take possession of New World lands and dispose resources and peoples as they saw fit. The Roman Catholic Church is the issuer of a permit to colonize which it has still not repudiated, despite the pope’s words on the pangs of colonization. This may come one day, provided that the historic conservatism of the Vatican does not regain its rights when Pope Francis lays down the rod and the miter.
The thunderclap came at the very end of the trip, on the pope’s flight back to the Vatican. For the first time, he recognized that the natives had suffered genocide. Point. “Abducting children, changing their culture, their mindset, their traditions — changing a race, an entire culture, yes, I use the word genocide,” Francis said.
This affirmation, arguably the most powerful of Francis’ six-day trip to Canada, was thrown between heaven and earth, in the absence of those who would have so hoped to hear those words. The pope nevertheless sided with those who want the strongest condemnation of the infamous treatment reserved for the First Nations.
Did the natives suffer a cultural genocide or just a genocide in the residential schools? The pope’s statement revives heated debates on the issue. The systematic killing of an identifiable group, with the intent to annihilate it, fits the traditional definition of genocide. Residential schools, projects of forced cultural assimilation, do not fall into the category of unspeakable horrors such as the Holocaust. This is no doubt why the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has opted for the use of the term cultural genocide. Conversely, the Canadian Historical Association (CHS) believes that the “long history of violence and dispossession of Indigenous peoples” undoubtedly justifies the use of the term “genocide”.
History is not a fixed material. If dates and events are immutable, their interpretation always depends on the ideological forces and currents that cross an era. Ours is different, as illustrated by the visit of Pope Francis. This week, Indigenous people have been given an important place and voice in the act of naming the historical wrongs they have suffered. The Aboriginal condition will never again return to the background of social and political debate, in Quebec and in Canada. Whether the First Nations genocide is cultural or not, the key is to continue the nation-to-nation dialogue to name things, right the wrongs, and build the future.