The Canadian Catholic bishops pledged on Friday to disburse 30 million within five years in a Reconciliation Fund with Aboriginals, whose administrators have just been appointed.
Updated yesterday at 4:17 p.m.
This fund, announced in September, followed another fundraiser by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) ten years ago that did not have the expected results. This campaign, between 2008 and 2014, had a target of 25 million, but only collected 3.7 million in donations from the faithful.
This time, the CCCB promises that if the donations are not there, the dioceses will contribute directly from their budget to total 30 million.
The Catholic Church, more specifically the religious communities involved in the residential school system, has already paid more than 50 million in this case, half of which in direct compensation to former students.
All of the directors of this new Reconciliation Fund are aboriginal. Chief Wilton Littlechild, a residential school survivor, is a lawyer who served as a commissioner with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. He will be one of the directors of the Catholic Church’s Indigenous Reconciliation Fund.
The other directors are Giselle Marion, an Indigenous lawyer from the Northwest Territories, and Rosella Kinoshameg, an Odawa-Ojibway nurse from Wikwemikong Unceded First Nation Territory, Ontario. Mme Kinoshameg is already part of the Indigenous Council of the Conference of Bishops.
With The Canadian Press