A Contentious Trip to Canada: Pope Francis Fulfills a Pledge, But It’s Only a Start

• Main Author: Higgins, Michael W.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@SHU 2022
• Subjects: Catholic Studies; Christianity; Canada; Turtle Island; First Nations; inuit
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/faculty/59; https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/contentious-trip-canada

It was not the typical papal visit. Yes, there were the political dignitaries, the popemobile, and the larger-than-usual press corps. But the reason for the visit was different, the tone was different, and Pope Francis was different: he was in a wheelchair for a good part of his July visit to Canada. He was there to honor a pledge he made in March of this year to the various representatives of the Métis, First Nations, and Inuit communities of Canada who had travelled to Rome to meet Francis personally and to ask on Vatican soil that he come to their soil on Turtle Island. They did so because they wanted him to apologize for the role of the Church in administering the Residential Schools that had been established by the federal government in the nineteenth century with the express purpose of ensuring total Indigenous assimilation into the white Victorian Christian society that was Canada at the time.