Pope Francis met with the indigenous peoples of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit, with whom he began the “penitential pilgrimage” to apologize for what happened to the native children in residential schools.
Here is the full speech of the Holy Father:
Madam Governor-General,
Mr. Prime Minister,
dear indigenous peoples of Maskwacis and of this Canadian land,
Dear brothers and sisters:
I was waiting for this moment to come to be among you. From here, from this sadly evocative place, I would like to begin what I desire in my interior: a penitential pilgrimage.
I come to your native lands to tell you personally that I am hurt, to implore God’s forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, to show you my closeness, to pray with you and for you.
I remember the meetings we had in Rome four months ago. At that moment, they pledged two pairs of moccasins to me, a sign of the suffering endured by the indigenous children, particularly those who unfortunately never returned home from the residential schools. They asked me to return the moccasins when I arrived in Canada; I will do so at the end of these words, and I would like to draw inspiration precisely from this symbol that, in recent months, has rekindled pain, indignation and shame in me. The memory of these children provokes affliction and calls for action so that all children are treated with love, honor and respect. But those moccasins also tell us about a path, a journey that we want to take together. Walk together, pray together, work together, so that the sufferings of the past give way to a future of justice, healing and reconciliation.
This is the reason why the first stage of my pilgrimage among you takes place in this region that has seen, since time immemorial, the presence of indigenous peoples. It is a territory that speaks to us, that allows us to remember.
Try to remember. Brothers and sisters, you have lived on this land for thousands of years with lifestyles that respected the land itself, inherited from past generations and protected for future ones. They treated it as a gift from the Creator to share with others and love in harmony with everything that exists, in a living interconnection between all living beings. Thus they learned to nurture a sense of family and community, and developed strong bonds between generations, honoring the elderly and caring for the young. How many good traditions and teachings based on attention to others and love for the truth, on courage and respect, on humility, on honesty and on the wisdom of life!
But, if these were the first steps taken in these territories, memory sadly leads us to the successive ones. The place where we find ourselves makes a cry of pain resound in me, a suffocated clamor that has accompanied me during these months. I think of the drama suffered by so many of you, by your families, by your communities, in what you shared with me about the suffering endured in residential schools. They are traumas that, in a way, relive each time they are remembered and I am aware that our meeting today can also awaken memories and wounds, and that many of you could feel bad as I speak. But it is fair to recall, because forgetting leads to indifference and, as has been said, “the opposite of love is not so much hate, it is indifference… the opposite of life is not death, it is indifference to life or death” (E. Wiesel). Remembering the devastating experiences that occurred in residential schools hits us, angers us, saddens us, but it is necessary.
It is necessary to remember how the policies of assimilation and disengagement, which also included the residential school system, were disastrous for the people of these lands. When European settlers first arrived here, there was a great opportunity to develop a fruitful encounter between cultures, traditions and spirituality. But for the most part this did not happen. And what you told me comes back to me, about how assimilation policies ended up systematically marginalizing indigenous peoples; how, also through the residential school system, their languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed; how the children suffered physical and verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse; how they were taken from their homes when they were little and how this indelibly marked the relationship between parents and children, between grandparents and grandchildren.
I thank you for having made all this enter my heart, for having expressed the weight that you carried inside, for having shared with me this bleeding memory. Today I am here, in this land that, together with an ancient memory, guards the scars of still open wounds. I am among you because the first step of this penitential pilgrimage is to renew my request for forgiveness and tell you, with all my heart, that I am deeply hurt: I apologize for the way in which, unfortunately, many Christians adopted the colonialist mentality of the powers that oppressed the indigenous peoples. I’m hurt. I apologize, in particular, for the way in which many members of the Church and religious communities cooperated, also through indifference, in those projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation of the governments of the time, which ended in the residential school system.
Although Christian charity has been present and there are not a few exemplary cases of dedication by children, the global consequences of the policies linked to residential schools have been catastrophic. What the Christian faith tells us is that it was a devastating mistake, incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It hurts to know that this compact terrain of values, language and culture, which gave your people a genuine sense of identity, has been eroded, and that you continue to pay the consequences. Faced with this outrageous evil, the Church kneels before God and implores forgiveness for the sins of his children (cf. St. John Paul II, Bull Incarnation is mysterium [November 29, 1998], 11: AAS 91 [1999], 140 ). I would like to repeat with shame and clarity: I humbly ask forgiveness for the evil that so many Christians committed against indigenous peoples.
Dear brothers and sisters, many of you and your representatives have stated that apologies are not a point of arrival. I fully agree. They are only the first step, the starting point. I am also aware that “looking to the past, what is done to ask for forgiveness and seek to repair the damage caused will never be enough” and “looking to the future, everything that is done to generate a culture capable of preventing these situations are not only not repeated, but that they do not find spaces» (Letter to the People of God, August 20, 2018). An important part of this process is doing a serious search for the truth about the past and helping residential school survivors to go through the healing process of the traumas they have suffered.
I pray and hope that Christians and society on this earth grow in the capacity to welcome and respect the identity and experience of indigenous peoples. I hope that concrete paths are found to get to know and value them, learning to walk altogether. For my part, I will continue to encourage the commitment of all Catholics toward indigenous peoples. I did it on more occasions and in various places, through meetings and appeals, and also through an apostolic exhortation. I know that all this requires time and patience, it is about processes that have to enter hearts, and my presence here and the commitment of the Canadian bishops are a testimony of the will to move forward on this path.
Dear friends, this pilgrimage extends over a few days and will reach distant places, however, it will not allow me to respond to many invitations and visit centers such as Kamloops, Winnipeg, and various places in Saskatchewan, the Yukon, and in the Northwest Territories. Although that is not possible, know that you are all in my memory and in my prayer. Know that I know the suffering, traumas and challenges of indigenous peoples in all regions of this country. The words that I will pronounce along this penitential path are addressed to all the communities and to the indigenous people, whom I embrace with all my heart.
In this first stage, I wanted to make room for memory. Today I am here to remember the past, to cry with you, to look at the earth in silence, to pray by the graves. Let silence help us all to internalize the pain. Silence and prayer. In the face of evil, let us pray to the Lord of good; before death let us pray to the God of life. Our Lord Jesus Christ made a tomb – the last station of hope before which all dreams had vanished and only crying, pain and resignation remained – the place of rebirth, of resurrection, where a life story began new and universal reconciliation. Our efforts to heal and reconcile are not enough, his grace is necessary, the affable and strong wisdom of the Spirit is necessary, and the tenderness of the Comforter. May He fill the hopes of hearts. May He take us by the hand. May He make us walk together.
(Translated from ACI Prensa)