Trudeau calls on Catholic Church to take responsibility for role in residential school system

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is calling on the Catholic Church to “step up” and take responsibility for its role in Canada’s residential school system.

Trudeau said Friday that as a Catholic he is deeply disappointed by the position that the church has taken now and over the past couple years.

He noted that he personally asked the Pope in 2017 to consider an apology for the institution’s part in the government-sponsored, church-run schools for Indigenous children that operated for more than 120 years.

“We’re still seeing resistance from the church,” Trudeau told a news conference in Ottawa. “Possibly from the church in Canada.”

Last week, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced that ground-penetrating radar had located what are believed to be the unmarked graves of 215 children at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Some 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were forcibly sent to government-funded, church-operated schools for over more than 150 years. Many suffered abuse and even death.

The discovery in Kamloops has sparked national outrage and grief, and has led to mounting calls for the federal government and church to investigate more potential school burial sites.

Trudeau said it’s going to be important for Catholics across the country to reach out to bishops and cardinals on this issue. He adds Catholics need to make it clear that they expect the church to take responsibility for its role in the residential school system.

“Be there to help in the grieving and the healing, including with records that are necessary,” he said.

Trudeau said he expects the church to be part of the important process of truth and healing and to make school records available.

The prime minister said the government has tools available to compel the church to provide these documents, but he indicated he does not want to resort to taking the institution to court.

The national assembly of bishops in Canada is distancing the Catholic Church as a whole from the residential school system in Canada.

“The Catholic community in Canada has a decentralized structure. Each Diocesan Bishop is autonomous in his diocese and, although relating to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, is not accountable to it,” the group said in a statement on Friday.

“Approximately 16 out of 70 Catholic dioceses in Canada were associated with the former Indian Residential Schools, in addition to about three dozen Catholic religious communities. Each diocese and religious community is corporately and legally responsible for its own actions. The Catholic Church as a whole in Canada was not associated with the Residential Schools, nor was the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“In a brief submitted to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in November 1993, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said that ‘various types of abuse experienced at some residential schools have moved us to a profound examination of conscience as a Church.’

“Already in 1991, Canadian Catholic Bishops and leaders of men and women religious communities had issued a statement that ‘We are sorry and deeply regret the pain, suffering and alienation that so many experienced’ at the Residential Schools.”

Archbishop Richard Gagnon, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement Monday the news of the recent discovery is “shocking.”

“As we see ever more clearly the pain and suffering of the past, the Bishops of Canada pledge to continue walking side by side with Indigenous Peoples in the present, seeking greater healing and reconciliation for the future.”

Throughout the years, individual bishops have apologized for the role that different dioceses played in the residential schools system.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available for anyone affected by residential schools. You can call 1-866-925-4419 24 hours a day to access emotional support and services.

-With files from Cormac Mac Sweeney