CANADA
Toronto Star
By: Tim Harper National Affairs, Published on Thu Jun 04 2015
OTTAWA — Stephen Harper can only have one item at the top of his agenda when he visits the Vatican next week.
The prime minister must formally invite Pope Francis to travel to Canada to apologize for the role of the Catholic Church in this country’s shameful residential schools era.
It is a demand of the commission and it has the backing of church leaders in this country.
Harper’s position — that he will wait for the final report of the commission later this year before reacting — looks like a bid to move this off his plate until after a federal election.
But there is no need to wait on this request.
The Roman Catholic church has often appeared to be, first and foremost, consumed with protecting the Roman Catholic church and initially church leaders here seemed headed along that same path when Justice Murray Sinclair called for an apology from Pope Francis, on Canadian soil, within a year.
They equivocated, explaining it was up to the church in Canada, not the Pope, to deal with this, that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission didn’t understand the decentralized nature of the church or the autonomous nature of the bishops, that the demand was “bold” and putting a deadline on such a gesture made it that much more difficult.
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