NDP MPs press for papal apology to survivors of residential school

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.