The moccasins returned

Publish date 16-11-2022

by Domenico Agasso

The Pope in Canada sadly asks for "pardon for the ways in which many Christians have supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that have oppressed indigenous peoples". In the midst of the endless green meadows of the Maskwacis area (“Bear Hills”, in the Cree language), in front of the native populations – First Nations, Métis and Inuit – Francis pronounces the long-awaited < i>mea culpa, in the name of the universal Church, for the horrors committed in the schools of the natives. The Pontiff says he is "here to cry with you".

In government residential institutions administered largely by Catholic institutions, between the 19th and 20th centuries, 150,000 Aboriginal children were subjected to a "cultural genocide", torn from their families, deprived of languages ​​and values, beaten , chained, punished, raped. Many died during their stay, including from malnutrition. The case exploded again after the recent discovery of mass graves.

The Bishop of Rome states that from this "sadly evocative place I would like to begin a penitential pilgrimage". He recalls the meetings he had in Rome four months earlier: «At the time I had been given two pairs of moccasins, a sign of the suffering endured by indigenous children, especially by those who unfortunately never returned home from residential schools». He had been asked to return the moccasins once he arrived in Canada: «I will do it at the end of these words». Those moccasins «also speak to us of a journey, of a journey that we wish to take together. Walk together, pray together, work together, so that the sufferings of the past give way to a future of justice and reconciliation".

Bergoglio quotes Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Shoah: «It is right to remember, because forgetfulness leads to indifference and, as it has been said, "the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference... the opposite of life is not death, but indifference to life or death”. Making a bloody memory of the devastating experiences that took place in residential schools strikes, indignant, pains, but it is necessary".

The children suffered "physical and verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse. They were taken away from their homes when they were little" and this marked "indelibly the relationship between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren."
The Pope articulates: "What the Christian faith tells us is that it was a devastating error, incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ".


Domenico Agasso
NP August / September 2022

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