“Meaningful meetings is not an apology, and we need that”
Nunatsiaq News
Nunavik April 20, 2018 – 9:30 am
SARAH ROGERS
Romeo Saganash speaks at a news conference on Parliament Hill on Wednesday, April 18, to express his disappointment in the Catholic church’s failure to issue an apology to survivors of Canada’s residential school system. (CPAC IMAGE)
A federal MP for Nunavik says he’s gone from disappointment to disgust over the Catholic church’s refusal to apologize to Indigenous survivors of Canadian residential schools.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops held a news conference on Parliament Hill on Wednesday, April 18 to try and provide clarity about a March 27 letter the organization sent out to Indigenous leaders, which said Pope Francis wouldn’t personally apologize to survivors for the church’s role in operating residential schools in Canada.
The apology was one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action when it issued its final report and 94 recommendations in 2015.
“As far as Call to Action #58 is concerned, after carefully considering the request and extensive dialogue with the Bishops of Canada, [Pope Francis] felt that he could not personally respond,” said Bishop Lionel Gendron in the March 27 letter.
Instead, Gendron said the Pope encouraged Canadian bishops themselves to work towards reconciliation with Indigenous communities.
At the April 18 news conference, the bishops’ organization denied that Pope Francis ever refused to apologize, and said the pontiff would consider a visit to Canada to have “meaningful” meetings with Indigenous groups.
But Abitibi-James Bay-Nunavik-Eeyou MP Romeo Saganash said the bishops’ statements made him feel sick to his stomach.
“When the Pope announced that he wouldn’t apologize, I was of course, as a survivor, very disappointed,” Saganash told media afterwards.
“And after hearing what they had to say today, now I’m disgusted,” he said. “Meaningful meetings is not an apology, and we need that.”
Saganash, a Cree from the Eeyou Itschee region of Quebec, attended residential school as a youth.
His brother Jonish was sent away to residential school at age five and never returned; the Saganash family only learned 40 years later that the boy had died in his first year at school.
Following the new conference, NDP MP Charlie Angus tabled a motion in the House of Commons that called on the federal government to urge the Pope to apologize for the church’s role in the residential school system.
The vote failed with the opposition of one Conservative MP, so MPs will likely debate the motion at a later date.
“I am not often rattled, but I was shaken up by the extent bishops went to evade responsibility for residential school horrors,” Angus wrote in a tweet April 18.
“Even to the point of claiming that the Catholic Church as an entity doesn’t really exist. Survivors deserve better.”
More than 70 per cent of Canada’s 132 residential schools were operated by the Catholic church and the federal government.
The United Church of Canada, the Anglican church and the Presbyterian church each apologized in the 1990s for their own roles in the residential school system.
In 2009, former Pope Benedict XVI expressed “sorrow” for the church’s role in residential schools to a delegation of Canada’s Assembly of First Nations, but stopped short of an apology.
In 2008, the federal government issued its own apology to former residential school students and implemented a settlement agreement, which established the launch of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
______________________________________________
Conservative MP blocks Parliament’s unanimous call for residential school apology from Pope Francis
The NDP MP who sponsored the call for a papal apology says he will introduce it again as soon as possible.
Toronto Star
Wed., April 18, 2018
OTTAWA—A Conservative MP from Alberta has scuppered an attempt to have the House of Commons unanimously call on Pope Francis to apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in the abuses of Canada’s Indigenous residential school system.
Garnett Genuis, the representative for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, loudly proclaimed from his desk in the House that he “absolutely” does not support an NDP motion to push for a papal apology. Genuis told reporters after the vote that he doesn’t believe Parliament should tell religious institutions what to do.
“I believe very much in religious freedom and the separation of church and state,” he said Wednesday. “It is quite unprecedented that Parliament would tell the Church how to undertake its (Indigenous) reconciliation efforts.”
Charlie Angus, the NDP MP who sponsored the motion, said he believes Parliament — as a partner that created the residential school system with various Christian denominations — has a responsibility to call on Pope Francis to apologize for the church’s involvement. He vowed to bring the motion back to the Commons for a debate, instead of asking MPs to unanimously support it.
Every party except the Conservatives has said it supports the motion as it is currently written, although Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has said he thinks any institutions involved in the schools should apologize.
“The obligation of Parliament to address this issue remains,” Angus said. “We will be laying out the case very clearly about the church’s complicity and role and obligation, and it will come to a standing vote.”
More than 150,000 Indigenous children attended residential schools from the late 19th century until the last one closed in 1996. In 2015, after years of study, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) described how children were forced from their families and home communities to attend the church-run schools, where they were indoctrinated into new languages, religions and ways of life. This amounted to “cultural genocide,” the TRC concluded.
The TRC also issued 94 “calls to action,” including a request for the pope to come to Canada within a year to apologize for the “church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse” of Indigenous children in the Catholic-run schools.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also asked Pope Francis to apologize during a meeting at the Vatican in May 2017.
Before Wednesday’s request for unanimous consent in the House of Commons, two bishops from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) spoke to reporters and defended the pope’s decision — announced last month — not to “personally respond” to the TRC’s call for an apology.
“The pope never said he wouldn’t apologize. He said he wouldn’t personally respond” to the TRC’s specific call for an apology, said Richard Gagnon, Archbishop of Winnipeg and vice-president of the CCCB.
Pressed repeatedly by reporters whether that means the pope will eventually apologize, CCCB president Lionel Gendron said Pope Francis is the only one who can “give answer to that.”
At the same time, Gagnon argued there’s a “misconception” that the Church has never apologized for its role in running the schools. The CCCB points to an apology from Canadian bishops in 1991 and a statement from Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, who “expressed sorrow at the anguish” caused in the schools by “some members of the church,” according to a Vatican release at the time.
NDP MP Romeo Saganash, who is Cree from northern Quebec and attended residential school as a child, said he had to leave the room as the bishops spoke because he felt like he was going to throw up.
“When the pope announced that he wouldn’t apologize, I was of course, as a survivor, very disappointed. And after hearing what they said today, now I’m disgusted,” Saganash said.
Evelyn Korkmaz, who attended the notorious St. Anne’s school near Fort Albany — where children were shocked in an electric chair and reported being forced to eat their own vomit — said an apology from the pope would help students who were abused try to move on.
“Just an apology,” she said. “That’s all we want.”
___________________________________________
Conservative MP opposes motion calling on Pope to apologize for residential schools
NDP MPs behind motion say they will move forward with debate and vote
CBC News
Posted: Apr 18, 2018 6:17 PM ET | Last Updated: April 18
A motion to call on Pope Francis to come to Canada and apologize for residential schools was tabled in the House of Commons on Wednesday. (Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters)
A lone Conservative MP’s voice of dissent scuttled the quick adoption of a motion in the House of Commons Wednesday calling on Pope Francis to apologize for residential schools.
The NDP motion was opposed by Conservative MP Garnett Genuis whose voice broke the unanimous consent needed to adopt the motion. It will now go to debate and a standing vote.
Genuis, who represents the Alberta riding of Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan, had telegraphed his position in a tweet posted about two hours before the motion was read out in the House of Commons.
“I believe very much in religious freedom and in the importance of separation of church and state,” Genuis told reporters after voicing his dissent.
“I think that most of the questions around the appropriate formula for an apology, about the way the church should approach it, are questions for the church.”
The motion, which was supported by the Liberals, calls on the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) to “invite Pope Francis to Canada” and apologize to residential school survivors on behalf of the Catholic Church.
The motion also calls on the church to turn over all its residential school documents and pay the remaining amount of funds it initially promised to raise for survivors before it was let off the hook by Ottawa.
The motion was drafted in response to word that the Pope “could not personally respond” to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 58, which requests the Pope come to Canada to make an apology to residential school survivors.
The Pope came to that decision after “extensive dialogue” with Canadian bishops, according to a letter released by the CCCB.
Vote by conscience
Conservative MP Cathy McLeod, the party’s Indigenous issues critic, said she planned to support the motion, but the party let its members follow their conscience on the issue.
“There’s some people, I think rightfully, that believe Parliament has no role in directing religious organizations in terms of what they should be doing,” said McLeod.
“They feel that this particular motion crosses that boundary in terms of the separation of government and … religious organizations.”
NDP MPs Charlie Angus and Romeo Saganash are behind the parliamentary motion to call for an apology from the Pope for residential schools. (CBC)
NDP MP Charlie Angus, who co-authored the motion with NDP MP Romeo Saganash, said he was let down but not surprised by Genuis’s actions.
“This is a tactic of the Catholic bishops working with Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to block progress,” said Angus.
“It’s just a roadblock. It’s going forward and it’s going to a vote.”
Angus said it would now be up to the House leaders of each party to decide when to bring the motion back for debate and a vote.
Bishops hold news conference
The CCCB claims the motion is driven by “misinformation and misunderstanding.”
Saint-Jean-Longueuil Bishop Lionel Gendron, president of the CCCB, and Winnipeg Archbishop Richard Gagnon, vice-president of the group, held a news conference on Parliament Hill before the motion was tabled.
They argued that Pope Francis’s decision not to respond to the TRC’s request for an apology did not preclude some unspecified but related action from the Pope should he ever come to Canada and meet with Indigenous peoples.
Gagnon said the Pope felt the TRC’s call to action requesting the apology, which included a one-year timeline for a response, had “rather strict confines.” Gagnon said he couldn’t speculate on what the Pope would say should he ever come to Canada, but that he has “a place in his heart for Indigenous peoples” as his track record shows.
“He is open to considering coming to Canada,” said Gagnon.
“He is giving deep thought to this.”
The bishops also argued the Catholic Church had no direct responsibility for residential schools which were run by 16 dioceses and about 36 orders. Catholic orders ran about 70 per cent of all residential schools.
‘They should feel shame’
Saganash, a residential school survivor, said he felt like vomiting listening to the CCCB news conference and had to walk out. He said he and his siblings attended four different residential schools, some thousands of kilometres away from his home in Waswanipi, Que.
“It is very disappointing. It is very disgusting,” said Saganash.
Sen. Murray Sinclair, who was the chair of the TRC, said the Catholic Church continues to try to avoid accountability through a decentralized structure.
“We know those entities were created for the express purpose of protecting the central assets of the church,” said Sinclair.
“They should feel shame.”
Evelyn Korkmaz attended the Catholic-run St. Anne’s residential school in Fort Albany, Ont., from 1969 to 1972. Following an Ontario Provincial Police investigation in the 1990s, a total of five people, including two nuns, were convicted of crimes committed at that school.
“I would accept an apology today, tomorrow, two years from now,” she said.
“An apology to me is an acknowledgement of the abuse that was done to us as children. That is all we are asking for.”
About the Author
