The Papal Apology and Seeds of an Action Plan

Abstract

The article begins by tracing expectations around a papal apology in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action, number 58, in the lead-up to the Indigenous delegations to the Vatican in March and the return visit of Pope Francis to Canada in July 2022. The article identifies six elements of the apology that Francis offered: addressing the reality that many children died in residential schools; acknowledging the suffering of Indigenous people who attended the schools; extending the apology on behalf of the church; how the residential school system was part of a colonizing effort to assimilate Indigenous peoples; acknowledging the trauma and intergenerational trauma that Indigenous survivors, their families and communities, continue to carry; and how he, in the context of his apology, interprets the wounds deriving from the school system from a theological perspective, as Christ crucified in those who suffered. The article names four areas where Francis laid the seeds of an action plan for the Catholic Church in Canada in discerning a new way of walking together with Indigenous Peoples.