ABUSE TRACKER

In evening prayer address, Francis says Catholic Church on a ‘new path’ in Canada

Pope Francis, who is presiding over Thursday evening prayers in Quebec City, acknowledged the sexual abuse inflicted on “minors and vulnerable people” for the first time since arriving in Canada.   

In his homily, Francis said the Catholic Church in Canada is on a new path after being devastated by “the evil perpetrated by some of its sons and daughters.”

He said addressing sexual abuse and other such “crimes” requires “firm action” and an “irreversible commitment.”

Francis has apologized during stops in Alberta and Quebec for the role Catholic institutions played in the Indigenous residential school system but until now had not directly spoken of sexual abuse.

His homily in Quebec City also says that as part of its reconciliation efforts, the Christian community can never again be “infected” by the idea that one culture is…

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Summary

• Visits oldest Catholic pilgrimage site in North America
• Pope seeks forgiveness for sexual abuse at residential schools
• Talks of “burden of failure” on Catholic Church
• Pope leaves on Friday via stop in Canadian Arctic

Pope Francis on Thursday asked for forgiveness for sexual abuse at Canadian schools for indigenous children run by Catholic orders, addressing a deep wound that many survivors wanted him to acknowledge during his apology tour in Canada.

At an evening vespers service with priests and nuns in the Quebec City cathedral, the pope said the Church in Canada was on a new path after being “devastated by the evil perpetrated by some of its sons and daughters.”Advertisement · Scroll to continueReport an ad

“I think in particular of the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people, scandals that require firm action and an irreversible commitment,” the pope said on the penultimate day of his six-day visit to…

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If you or someone you know needs resources or support related to sexual violence, contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s 24/7 hotline at 800-871-7741.

The Rev. Robert C. Vaillancourt will return to his duties after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland determined allegations of sexual abuse were unfounded.

Vaillancourt was placed on administrative leave in July 2021 while being investigated for an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor girl in the 1980s. Although he has not yet been assigned his newest post, Vaillancourt will be returned to active ministry effective immediately, according to the Portland diocese.

Investigations into the allegations included interviews with more than 30 individuals, according to the diocese, as well as record and document checks, which did not find evidence to prove that the alleged events occurred. Findings from the investigation were reported to the Diocese of Portland’s Review Board, which found…

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An investigation of the 2 allegations found that the abuse, which allegedly took place in the 1980s, ‘could not have occurred,’ the Portland Diocese said.

A Maine priest is being returned to active ministry after a yearlong investigation by Catholic Church officials found allegations that he sexually abused two girls in the 1980s are unfounded, the Portland Diocese said Wednesday.

The Rev. Robert Vaillancourt was placed on administrative leave last July after church officials received a complaint from a woman who said that she was sexually abused by the priest in the 1980s. Two months later, another woman came forward and said she, too, had been sexually abused by Vaillancourt during the same period. Both women were girls at the time.

The second woman said the abuse occurred in Biddeford, where in the early 1980s Vaillancourt was a new priest and running a youth program at St. Andre’s Catholic Church.

…

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After the completion of a yearlong investigation, Fr. Robert Vaillancourt will be returned to active ministry, effective immediately. Two allegations of sexual abuse of minor girls in the 1980s were determined to be unfounded. Fr. Vaillancourt has not yet received a new assignment from the diocese.

In July of 2021, upon receipt of the first complaint and in accordance with diocesan policy, Fr. Vaillancourt was placed on administrative leave. The announcement of the administrative leave and investigation was distributed to all parishes in the diocese, publicized on the diocesan website and social media platforms, and issued to media outlets throughout the state, encouraging people to come forward with relevant information. Subsequently, a second allegation against Fr. Vaillancourt was received through an attorney representing a second woman. Civil authorities were notified of the allegations and state law enforcement conducted investigations over the past year.

Internal investigations were conducted by the Diocese…

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A lawsuit brought by a former altar boy who alleges he was sexually abused as a child in the 1960s by a now-deceased Roman Catholic bishop and other clergy can proceed, the highest court in Massachusetts said in a decision released Thursday.

The man from Chicopee identified in court papers as John Doe alleges in the suit filed in February 2021 that not only was he abused by former Diocese of Springfield Bishop Christopher Weldon as well as two priests, but also that the church engaged in a yearslong coverup to protect the bishop’s reputation.

The diocese sought to have the suit dismissed based on charitable immunity and the doctrine of church autonomy, derived from the First Amendment.

The Supreme Judicial Court, which upheld a lower court’s decision, said charitable immunity does not apply because “The abuse allegedly carried out by Weldon and other church leaders was not, and could…

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To the editor — I read the Yakima Herald-Republic article, “Vatican issues reprimand of former Yakima bishop Carlos Seville” (July 18 issue).

Having family in Yakima and being Catholic myself, I think that bishops should be held to high standards of accountability when it comes to cases of sex abuse by clergy. The handling of such cases has been proven to have been woefully deficient in the Yakima Diocese and former Bishop Sevilla deserves the papal reprimand — and really should get more than just a slap on the wrist.

These scandals need to stop. Parishioners should not have their tithes used to pay off defense claims or attorney fees. If a priest or bishop is found guilty, he deserves jail time. And if that penalty were imposed more often where guilt is proven, it would greatly deter such offenses.

JAMES A. MARPLES

Longview, Texas

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The Vatican’s belated and inadequate reprimand of now-retired Yakima Bishop Carlos Sevilla shows that some church leaders still struggle to grasp the seriousness and complexity of the problem of clergy sexual abuse.

It also shows that they feel little obligation to be transparent enough to reassure the community that local parishes are safe and that the church stands ready to hold clergy accountable for any misdeeds.

Even now.

Even after the church has had to answer for thousands of clergy around the world who’ve been plausibly accused of abusing young boys and girls over the years.

Even after the church has paid out millions to settle international claims made against clergymen by people who suffered life-scarring harm, intimidation and humiliation at the hands of the people they trusted more than anyone: their priests.

Even after stacks of disturbing reports of church leaders around the globe — including here…

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The Canadian government made clear Wednesday that Pope Francis’ apology to Indigenous peoples for abuses in the country’s church-run residential schools didn’t go far enough, suggesting that reconciliation over the fraught history is still very much a work in progress.

The official government reaction came as Francis arrived in Quebec City for meetings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Governor General Mary Simon at her Quebec residence, the hilltop Citadelle fortress, on the second leg of Francis’ week-long visit to Canada.

The government’s criticisms echo those of some survivors and concern Francis’ omission of any reference to the sexual abuse suffered by Indigenous children in the schools, as well as his original reluctance to name the Catholic Church as an institution bearing responsibility.

Francis has said he is on a “penitential pilgrimage” to atone for the church’s role in the residential school system, in which generations of Indigenous children were…

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Fugitive priest Joannes Rivoire says Nunavut RCMP have yet to speak to him about allegations

[Includes a two-part video interview of Rivoire]

Warning: This story contains details that some people may find disturbing. The Hope for Wellness Help Line offers immediate help to all Indigenous Peoples across Canada. It is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1-855-242-3310 in English and French and upon request in Cree, Ojibway, and Inuktitut.

A pigeon lands on the railing of his balcony overlooking Lyon, the third-largest city in France. It appears to be waiting for something.

Pierre Joannes Rivoire smiles.

“I feed them,” he says.

But not today.

“I don’t have any bread,” says the 92-year-old as the bird gives up and flies away.

The French Catholic priest turns his attention back to the interview with APTN News.

“Come on, why are there these accusations?” he says. “I am wondering what’s the…

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Canadian justice officials have asked France to extradite Oblate priest Joannes Rivoire, APTN News has learned.

Ian McLeod, a spokesperson for Department of Justice Canada, confirmed the move in an email to APTN Wednesday.

“Due to the exceptional circumstances of this case, Justice Canada can confirm that an extradition request was made to France in respect of Mr. Rivoire,” McLeod wrote.

“The extradition request was made by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada through Department of Justice officials.”

McLeod noted Canada normally keeps state-to-state communications private.

He did not elaborate on the nature of the “exceptional circumstances.”

He said there would be no further comment.

Rivoire, 92, is wanted in Canada on one count of sexual assaulting an Inuk girl from his time as a Catholic missionary in Nunavut between 1963 and 1993. RCMP in Nunavut laid the charge in 2021 after a 51-year-old woman filed a complaint.

The allegation has not been tested…

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[VIDEO]

CNN’s Paula Newton speaks with survivors who suffered decades of physical, sexual, and mental abuse in Canadian residential schools with ties to the Catholic Church.

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The Rev. Vincent Chávez, pastor of St. Therese of the Infant Jesus Catholic Church in Albuquerque, said he has been placed on a leave of absence after publicly criticizing the Archdiocese of Santa Fe’s request that its parishes contribute $12 million to a $121.5 million sexual abuse settlement.

Chávez said after he spoke out publicly in a July 3 story in The New Mexican, he was called into a tense meeting that ended with the priest being placed on leave.

Chávez, 59, said the leave will last four to six months starting Aug. 1. During this time, as Chávez understands it, he will not be able to attend archdiocese events but can still see and socialize with parishioners outside of parish buildings.

Chávez said the leave could be “for multiple reasons,” noting he has faced a few health issues that crept up last summer. However, when asked if he…

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Lawyer says he has received hundreds of unreported cases since he was tasked by the country’s bishops in February

The lawyer leading the Spanish Catholic Church’s investigation into clerical sexual abuse said he is currently looking into thousands of suspected cases that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.

In an interview with Spanish news agency Europa Press published July 25, Javier Cremades, who is leading the investigation, said he also has received hundreds of unreported cases since he was appointed by the bishops in February.

“Between those that the bishops’ conference has and those that the newspaper El País has, we are talking about approximately between 1,000 and 2,000 cases. Now we are sorting and classifying those that have reached us,” Cremades said.

In mid-December, the Spanish newspaper El País said it conducted a three-year investigation into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Spain and uncovered 251 unpublished cases of abuse…

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Incident took place on a church premises when the victim was 10 years old

The city police, acting on directions from the National Human Rights Commission, have booked eight persons, including a church priest and a teacher, for sexually abusing a minor girl a decade ago.

The East Division Women Police Station has registered a case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, for rape and outraging the modesty of a woman under the Indian Penal Code. The sexual abuse reportedly took place on a church premises when the victim was 10 years old.

The victim, who is now aged 20 and pursuing her studies in a city-based college, was under treatment over the trauma she suffered due to the sexual abuse. She recently shared her ordeal with her sister, who approached NHRC, which directed the city police to register a case and probe the matter.

…

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Researchers at Creighton University have reached out to Into Account about numerous reports from men who describe grooming, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse perpetrated by Rev Daniel Kenney, known as “The Monkey Priest,” formerly active at Creighton Preparatory School and Camp Buford, a children’s wilderness camp in Wyoming. For more information about Kenney’s assignments, see the timeline at the bottom of this post.

Some of Kenney’s behaviors include memorizing student schedules, appearing wherever they were throughout the day, pulling students out of class, asking invasive questions about their private lives including about masturbation, providing “counseling” in which he asked about masturbation and sexual thoughts, bringing boys to confession, and asking boys to undress.

If you experienced any of these behaviors, or others, including behaviors that simply felt strange or off, we invite you to contact us. If you’d like to report directly to the researchers, they…

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Pope Francis prayed for healing Tuesday from the “terrible effects of colonization” as he led a pilgrimage to a Canadian lake that has been known to Native peoples for centuries as a sacred place of healing.

The prayer service at Lac Sainte Anne in Alberta was one of the spiritual highlights of the pontiff’s six-day visit to Canada to atone for the Catholic Church’s role in running residential schools that forcibly assimilated the country’s Indigenous children into Christian society. On Monday he apologized for the “catastrophic” ways families were torn apart; the following day he transitioned to praying to help them heal from the “wounds of violence.”

“In this blessed place, where harmony and peace reign, we present to you the disharmony of our experiences, the terrible effects of colonization, the indelible pain of so many families, grandparents and children,” Francis said on the shore of the lake. “Help us…

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Grandmothers are traditionally revered in Canada’s Indigenous culture, and St. Anne’s grandmotherly intercession is playing a significant role in this papal pilgrimage’s search for healing the Church and First Nations.

Among Indigenous Catholics of North America, St. Anne is greatly revered as the grandmother of Jesus. So Pope Francis’ July 24-30 “pilgrimage of penitence” to Canada’s First Nations, Meti, and Inuit peoples fittingly centers the beginning and ending around two shrines dedicated to St. Anne.

In North American Indigenous cultures, grandparents and elders are traditionally revered. But grandmothers have an especially honored status, since as women they are blessed with the Creator’s gift of nurturing life, and as grandmothers, they nurture their children’s children with their gifts of memory, wisdom and unconditional love.

Many of us can recognize their spiritual insight the Vatican affirmed as the “idea of the nonna” recalling memories of our own grandmothers’ role and influence…

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The United States in May acknowledged the damage inflicted on generations of children at federal Indian boarding schools, a system built to assimilate indigenous kids into white society by cutting them off from their parents and tribes.

Geraldine Charbonneau Dubourt, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, welcomed that admission, part of a report released by the Department of the Interior . But what she really wants is justice.

The septuagenarian has waged a so-far fruitless effort to seek restitution for the rapes and other abuses she says she, her eight sisters and scores of other Native American children endured for years at the former St. Paul’s Indian Mission School in Marty, South Dakota.

A 2010 state law barred victims of alleged sexual abuse aged 40 or older from filing civil lawsuits against any institution that knew or should have known about it. That legislation,…

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It was a stunning image: Pope Francis briefly wearing a full Indigenous headdress, its rows of soft white feathers fastened in place by a colorful, beaded headband after he apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s “disastrous” residential school system for Indigenous children.

Chief Wilton Littlechild, a residential school survivor himself, gave Francis the headdress Monday, placing it on his head amid cheering by an audience in Maskwacis, Alberta, that included many school survivors.

The Vatican and the pope clearly appreciated the gesture: Francis kissed Littlechild’s hands after receiving the headdress, something he has done in the past as a sign of respect for Holocaust survivors, and has done on this trip for residential school survivors.

The Vatican obviously understood the symbolic significance of the moment, putting the photo on the front page of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano under the headline “I humbly beg forgiveness.”

Headdresses historically are…

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Pope Francis to address the devastating effects of decades of abuse against indigenous children in Church-run schools

The hurt, pain and damage to the lives of countless indigenous children top Pope Francis’ agenda on his visit to Canada. Climate change damage to their ancestral lands and environment by big business is also on his mind, and which he will speak forcibly and clearly about.

Pope Francis has strongly commented on destructive climate change resulting from rich nations’ emissions of greenhouse gases seen in many devastating wildfires, droughts, floods and poverty everywhere. This has been caused by failed policies of governments and big business on a scale never seen before. Everything is connected.

Pope Francis challenged them recently on the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation and called on world leaders to address climate change and growing poverty, especially among indigenous peoples. This Sunday, he visited Canadian indigenous people…

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Is there anything so rare in our modern, technocratic, power-obsessed world as genuine contrition?

How many times do public figures apologize “if anyone was offended” by some grievous wrong, as if what is wrong is contingent upon negative consequences? It is a non-apology apology.

How often do people mouth slogans about the sins of the past, asking forgiveness for the wrongs committed by others and making an idol of guilt? The historian of the Holocaust, Eva Fleischner, recognized the danger of such attitudes when she wrote: “Guilt which remains guilt is dangerous. It will become too heavy a burden sooner or later, and may in the end result in blaming the victim. … We must help our students transform their sense of guilt into a sense of responsibility, for the present and the future.”

How often do we moderns — having reduced our religion to a form…

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Pope Francis visited the first officially designated Indigenous parish after apologizing to survivors of residential schools in Canada

While presented as missionary work, the operation of residential schools by Catholics in Canada was actually an attempt to impose European culture on Canada’s Indigenous people, Pope Francis said.

“One cannot proclaim God in a way contrary to God himself,” the pope said July 25 at Edmonton’s Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples.

Several of the First Nation, Inuit and Métis parishioners of Sacred Heart and many of their parents and grandparents were forced by the Canadian government to attend residential schools, which were set up to force the Indigenous to adopt European languages, culture and forms of Christianity.

“If we think of the lasting pain experienced in these places by so many people,” the pope said, “we feel nothing but anger and shame.”

“Nothing can ever take away the violation…

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The first step of Pope Francis’ “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada involved him returning two pairs of children’s moccasins.

The little shoes were not among the Indigenous artifacts held in the Vatican Museums, but rather reminders that Chief Marie-Anne Day Walker-Pelletier of the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan had left with Pope Francis in March so he would think and pray about the children who went to residential schools and, especially, about those who never returned home.

On the treaty land of the Ermineskin Cree Nation, Samson Cree Nation, Louis Bull Tribe and the Montana First Nation, near the former site of one of Canada’s largest residential schools, Pope Francis said, “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.”

“The first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply…

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Survivors of Canada’s residential school system who were present for Pope Francis’s apology on Monday described the moment as historic and “bittersweet,” but said that the highly anticipated mea culpa will only be meaningful if it’s followed by concrete action.

Speaking during a press conference after the pope’s apology, Samson Cree Nation Chief Vernon Saddleback said, “Words cannot describe how important today is for the healing journey for a lot of First Nations people.”

“I’m really grateful for this event to happen,” he said, calling the pope’s apology a historic moment not only for Canada, but for all First Nations communities. “It was an amazing day, a historic day…words fail me to say what this means to my people.”

Similarly, Frog Leg Cree Nation Chief Greg Desjarlais voiced gratitude that a papal apology finally happened in Canada, saying, “today is a bittersweet day.”

“It’s bitter in some people’s minds and hearts, some…

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Pope Francis delivered on Monday an apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in residential schools, saying many Christians supported the colonization of Indigenous people. He made the remarks at the former site of the Ermineskin Indian Residential School in community of Maskwacis, south of Edmonton.

Here is some of the reaction to the historic apology:

“Pope Francis’s words today and in Rome this spring represent a journey that has taken more than 180 years — from the time the doors of these so-called schools opened to the challenges First Nations people live today. By apologizing for the abuses of the past, Pope Francis has helped to open the door for survivors and their families to walk together with the church for a present and future of forgiveness and healing. I accept and choose this path.” — Former Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine, who attended two Manitoba residential…

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France has received a request from Canada to extradite retired Roman Catholic priest Johannes Rivoire so he can face a charge of sexual abuse from when he worked in Canada’s North, a French diplomatic source said.

Canada’s northern indigenous people, the Inuit, plan to press the Pope Francis while he is on a visit on Friday to help return Rivoire to Canada.

“An extradition request concerning Mr. Johannes Rivoire has been transmitted to France by Canada’s judicial authorities,” the diplomatic source told Reuters. “This request is currently being processed by the Ministry of Justice, which has asked Canadian authorities for additional information.”

It was not clear what information France is seeking or when Canada made the request.

Canada’s justice department could not be immediately reached for comment. It has previously declined to comment on whether it asked France to extradite Rivoire, saying such requests are confidential.

The extradition treaty between…

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As Pope Francis’ visit to Iqaluit looms, accused priest remains sheltered from charge in France

The Catholic Church has promised to help bring one of its priests charged with sexually assaulting Inuit children to justice, but whether that priest ever steps into a courtroom is likely up to him alone.

Johannes Rivoire, 91, spent more than 30 years in Nunavut, mostly in Arviat and Naujaat, between 1960 and 1992.

While his name often comes up in the context of residential schools, he never worked within the residential school system.

Rivoire’s responsibilities were those of a parish priest: He performed mass, taught catechism, presided over funerals, officiated weddings. In his free time, he kept a greenhouse, growing lettuce and radishes in soil cultivated from seaweed.

He is also accused of sexually assaulting boys and girls during that time, some as young six years old.

Rivoire left Canada in 1993, saying…

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A former Macomb County priest will spend years in prison after being convicted of sex abuse, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced today.

Judge Diane Druzinski sentenced Neil Kalina, 67, to up to 15 years in prison after the former priest was convicted on two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct (CSC) by a jury in Macomb County Circuit Court last month.  Kalina was a priest at St. Kiernan Catholic Church in Shelby Township from 1982-1985.

“This is a victory for the survivors who fought to see their abusers held accountable,” said Nessel.  “Regardless of how much time has passed or how difficult a case may be, my prosecutors are committed to securing justice for the victims of clergy abuse.  Adults who prey upon and subject children to abuse belong in prison.”

Kalina was first charged in May 2019 and arrested in Littlerock, California. The jury was also presented first-degree CSC…

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A former Macomb County priest was sentenced to prison this week for sex abuse in the 80s.

Neil Kalina received a 7-15 year sentence, with credit for 215 days served. 

He was a priest at St. Kiernan Catholic Church in Shelby Township from 1982-1985. He was first charged in 2019 and arrested in Littlerock, Calif. 

Last month, a jury found him guilty of two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct.

“This conviction marks the sixth one secured by my clergy abuse team,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said. “It’s also a reminder of our ongoing commitment to this investigation and the survivors in these cases. We will continue to fight for justice.”

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WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

Christina Kitchekesik couldn’t travel to Maskwacis, Alta., to see Pope Francis apologize to survivors of residential schools, but felt emotional watching the televised program alongside others at a viewing event in Winnipeg on Monday.

“It’ll always affect us for the rest of our lives. We won’t forget, but we have to learn to live with it by healing yourself, going through ceremonies,” said Kitchekesik, who is from Tataskweyak Cree Nation, about 900 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

She is one of a number of Manitoba residential school survivors — although she now considers herself a “thriver” — who watched the Pope address thousands of Indigenous people in Canada.

Pope Francis apologized for members of the Catholic Church who co-operated with Canada’s “devastating” policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed their families and marginalized generations in ways still being…

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The former Manitoba senator who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada says there’s a “deep hole” in the apology issued by Pope Francis Monday for the role Catholics played in Canada’s residential school system.

Murray Sinclair says the historic apology, although meaningful to many residential school survivors and their families, fell short of Call to Action 58 in the final report. 

It specifically called on the Pope to issue an apology “for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools.”

In a written statement Tuesday, Sinclair said the intent was that survivors would not only hear remorse, “but an acceptance of responsibility for what they were put through at the hands of the church and other institutions.”

While he called it a “historic apology,” he said the Pope’s statement “has left a deep hole…

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Pope Francis apologized on Monday to Canada’s native people on their land for the Church’s role in schools where indigenous children were abused, calling their forced cultural assimilation a “deplorable evil” and “disastrous error.”

Speaking near the site of two former schools in Maskwacis, Alberta, Francis apologized for Christian support of the “colonizing mentality” of the times and called for a “serious” investigation of the schools to help survivors and descendants heal.

“With shame and unambiguously, I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the indigenous peoples,” said Francis, who arrived and left in a wheelchair due to a fractured knee.

The address to the First Nations, Metis and Inuit people was the first apology on Canadian soil by the pope as a part of tour to heal deep wounds that rose to the fore after the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools last…

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An abridged trip through 500 years of papal and legal history to understand why Pope Francis faces calls to renounce the Doctrine of Discovery, which underpins Europe’s heist of the Americas and a mass dispossession of Indigenous peoples that remains foundational to Canadian sovereignty

Before Rodrigo Borgia donned the papal tiara in 1492 and became Pope Alexander VI, he’d had multiple mistresses and fathered at least eight children. He favoured debauched parties with dancing prostitutes and used the papacy to enrich his Spanish family.

Upon his death, likely by poisoning, subsequent popes sealed off the Vatican apartments where Pope Alexander and his family had lived, as a prophylactic against the ghosts of his orgiastic reign.

And this is where many biographical entries end, prioritizing titillation over the substance of his rule, which still haunts the world despite the efforts of Vatican ghostbusters.

Abridged accounts of his life tend to exclude…

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Rome, Italy – In his first public event in Canada after landing in Edmonton yesterday, Pope Francis met with members of different Indigenous communities, offering a highly-anticipated apology for the Catholic Church’s role in what’s been described as a “cultural genocide” associated with the country’s residential school system.

Speaking to members of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities on the grounds of the former Ermineskin residential school in Maskwacis, Alberta, Pope Francis Monday said the land he was standing on “preserves the scars of still open wounds.”

“I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry,” he said, and apologized “for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous peoples. I am sorry.”

Francis asked…

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In his first public remarks in Canada, Pope Francis has asked indigenous residential school survivors for forgiveness.

“I am deeply sorry,” the Pope said on the grounds of a former residential school in Maskwacis, near Edmonton.

He said his apology is a first step, and that a “serious investigation” into abuses must occur to foster healing.

The pontiff is in Canada to apologise for the Church’s role in schools meant to assimilate indigenous children.

The government-funded schools were part of a policy meant to destroy indigenous cultures and languages.

The papal apology was received by applause from survivors in the audience, some of whom travelled far to hear the Pope speak.

Pope Francis expressed “sorrow, indignation and shame” for the actions of many members of the Roman Catholic Church, who ran and operated majority of residential schools in Canada.

The 85-year-old Pope called the schools system a “disastrous error” and…

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Pontiff to take part in a lakeside ceremony that incorporates indigenous elements

Pope Francis’ visit to Canada, which he has described as a penitential pilgrimage, took a more celebratory turn on Tuesday when he presided at Mass in an Edmonton stadium before taking part in a traditional lakeside ceremony with indigenous Catholics.

Although organizers of the papal visit and the pope himself have made it clear that its purpose is to apologize for Catholics’ role in what Francis called government-sponsored “projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation,” his public appearances on his second full day in the country will highlight a more harmonious legacy of the church’s relationship with indigenous Canadians.

On Monday, the pope apologized repeatedly for Catholic participation in the country’s system of residential schools which, for more than a century, assimilated indigenous children to white culture. On Tuesday, he will point to the…

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Pope Francis on July 25 said he was “deeply sorry” for the Catholic Church’s “catastrophic” involvement in the “cultural destruction” of Canada’s Indigenous peoples through its participation in running the country’s residential schools.

“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said during a solemn meeting with Indigenous representatives, while visiting the former site of one of the largest residential schools in the country.

The pope’s remarks — his first since arriving in the country on Sunday, July 24 — fulfill a demand from the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which since 2015 has called on the pope to formally issue an apology on Canadian soil for the “spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools.”

“I am sorry,” said Francis. “I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways…

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In a historic apology, Pope Francis condemned Canada’s residential school system as “a deplorable evil” and asked forgiveness of the Indigenous Peoples for Christians participation in it.

“I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry,” the pope told the more than 2,000 Indigenous leaders and survivors that had come from all over the country, representing the 1.7 million members of Canada’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples.

Speaking in Spanish, at Maskwacis, 60 miles from Edmonton near the site of Ermineskin—one of Canada’s largest residential schools—Pope Francis gave a historic, long awaited, unequivocal apology to these Indigenous Peoples. He condemned the entire system of “cultural destruction” and “forced assimilation” through the residential schools as “a deplorable evil” and “a disastrous error” that is “incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus…

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The excited and continuous beating of drums filled the circular, tented space at Ermineskin Cree Nation territory in Maskwacis, Alberta. Pope Francis waited—with a sense of gravity and solemnity clearly visible on his face—as he sat on stage for proceedings to begin at Muskwa Park, the site of one of Canada’s former Catholic Church-run residential schools, and a place that today is also a sacred meeting ground for the Cree Nation. Here, the pope was expected to make a long-awaited and promised apology for the Catholic Church’s involvement in residential schools and the abuses perpetrated there for more than a century by priests and consecrated religious women and men.

“I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry,” the pope said, as he addressed the assembly minutes later, flanked by…

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Pope Francis on Monday apologized to Canada’s Indigenous community for the role the Catholic Church played in overseeing decades of abuse at some of the nation’s residential schools. The schools, which were run by both churches and Canada’s federal government, removed about 150,000 Indigenous children from their families — and used hunger, sexual violence and religious indoctrination to forcibly assimilate the students.

But it wasn’t the first time Francis — or even his predecessors — has asked forgiveness for the church’s crimes and transgressions. In fact, his remarks were the latest in a string of papal apologies in recent years.

Not all of the pleas have fully implicated the church, instead blaming individuals for wrongdoing or misconduct. Here are some of the apologies the various heads of the Catholic Church have given in recent years.

Pope Francis

Francis is in Canada this week on the first papal visit…

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Victoria McIntosh unfurls a little girl’s white winter coat from her handbag and smooths it out on the table.

Her grandmother sewed it for her when she was four years old, she says, before she was sent to Fort Alexander residential school in the 1960s. But a nun took the coat from her, she remembers.”That nun took it off of me and threw it at my mom,” she told CNN. Then the nun called her mother a ‘savage” — an incident she said foreshadowed years of abuse.

McIntosh was sexually assaulted by a priest at that school for years, she says. “He violated me in ways that no child should ever go through. And I would break down and I would cry. Thinking about it, what he’d done. And I wonder why. What did I do to you?”

She has identified the priest as the now-retired…

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Pope Francis issued a historic apology Monday for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations.

“I am deeply sorry,” Francis said to applause from school survivors and Indigenous community members gathered at a former residential school south of Edmonton, Alberta. He called the school policy a “disastrous error” that was incompatible with the Gospel and said further investigation and healing is needed.

“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said.

In the first event of his weeklong “penitential pilgrimage,” Francis traveled to the lands of four Cree nations to pray at a cemetery and then deliver the long-sought apology at nearby powwow ceremonial grounds. Four chiefs escorted the pontiff in a wheelchair to the site near the…

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For too long, the Catholic Church ignored and even hid the problem of sexual abuse by its clergy. Pope Francis, to his credit, has instituted reforms that are more far-reaching than his predecessors’. But a disturbing article in The Post by Chico Harlan and Alain Uaykani suggests that the church still has a long way to go in protecting children from predatory clerics and the bishops who enable them — particularly in less developed countries, far from the glare of effective judiciaries and unstinting journalism. There, as the authors write, “the scale of abuse remains both a mystery and a cause for trepidation.”

In one case they describe, a teenage nun-in-training said she had been raped by a priest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an incident that resulted in no serious discipline for the accused assailant owing to what an array of sources described to an…

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It is largely anticipated that Pope Francis will deliver another apology to Indigenous people while in Canada this week. But are there actions he could take while here to further reconciliation?

Many Indigenous people would like the Pope to publicly renounce the Doctrine of Discovery. Bruce McIvor is one of them. He is a lawyer, a historian and the author of Standoff: Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It. He explains what this doctrine is, how it went from a papal edict to a legal principle in Canada and why renouncing it would be a meaningful action for the Pope to take while here.

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Pope apologizes to Indigenous people of Canada“I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the Church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools,” the pontiff said.

Last year, hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered on the grounds of former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

Pope Francis makes remarks as he gives an apology for the treatment of First Nations children in Canada’s Residential School system, during his visit on Monday.And Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has reported that more than 4,000 Indigenous children died either from neglect or abuse in residential schools, many of which were run by the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis visiting Canada to apologize for Indigenous abuse in Catholic residential…

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ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS 

___________________________________

Madam Governor General,
Mr Prime Minister,
Dear indigenous peoples of Maskwacis and of this land of Canada,
Dear brothers and sisters!

I have been waiting to come here and be with you! Here, from this place associated with painful memories, I would like to begin what I consider a pilgrimage, a penitential pilgrimage. I have come to your native lands to tell you in person of my sorrow, to implore God’s forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, to express my closeness and to pray with you and for you.

I recall the meetings we had in Rome four months ago. At that time, I was given two pairs of moccasins as a sign of the suffering endured by indigenous children, particularly those who, unfortunately, never came back from the residential schools. I was asked to return the moccasins when I came to Canada; I brought them, and I will return…

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Images from the early 20th century sent to Rome by priests in Canada

About 1,000 black-and-white photos from the early days of Canada’s residential school system have been discovered in the archives of a Roman Catholic order in Rome.

Raymond Frogner, head of archives at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) in Winnipeg, found the photographs earlier this month when he was given exclusive access to the Oblate General Archives to identify residential school records.

He said the images are part of an early 20th century photo series sent by priests from various institutions in Canada — including the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, where the discovery of more than 200 suspected unmarked graves was reported in May 2021.

“The photos would give some indication of children who perhaps might have been known to be lost,” Frogner said. 

“If the photos are dated, we can actually…

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Pope Francis’ 38th trip abroad takes him to Canada. He wants to “meet and embrace” Indigenous people and draw attention to their suffering, to which the Catholic Church contributed. But will he also take responsibility?

“We expect an apology from Pope Francis,” 64-year-old Evelyn Korkmaz told DW, looking ahead to the Catholic Church leader’s visit to Canada, which begins Sunday.

More than 50 years ago, Korkmaz experienced suffering at the hands of the Catholic Church. Her plight was shared by tens of thousands of children of the First Nations, Canada’s Indigenous people.

As a 10-year-old, Evelyn Korkmaz enrolled at St. Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany in the north of Ontario, close to several First Nation reservations. There, she endured four years of abuse. There was, she remembers, “an electric chair” at her school and children were put in straitjackets. They experienced abuse, rape and even death. View Cache

Pope Francis began a historic visit to Canada on Sunday to apologize to Indigenous peoples for abuses by missionaries at residential schools, a key step in the Catholic Church’s efforts to reconcile with Native communities and help them heal from generations of trauma.

Francis kissed the hand of a residential school survivor as he was greeted at the Edmonton, Alberta, airport by Indigenous representatives, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon, an Inuk who is Canada’s first Indigenous governor general.

The gesture set the tone of what Francis has said is a “penitential pilgrimage” to atone for the role of Catholic missionaries in the forced assimilation of generations of Native children — a visit that has stirred mixed emotions across Canada as survivors and their families cope with the trauma of their losses and receive a long-sought papal apology.

Francis had no official events scheduled Sunday, giving him time…

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In yet another wide-ranging interview, Pope Francis said Monday that he doesn’t plan to step down anytime soon, though he prays for the strength to do so when the time is right.

If the day comes when he does resign, the pontiff said he would prefer to be considered the “bishop emeritus of Rome rather than pope emeritus” and to dedicate his time to the confession of the faithful, the practice of charity, and visiting the sick in some Italian parish.

“If I survive after resignation, I would like to do one thing: confess and go to see the sick,” he said.

On other fronts, the pope said pro-choice Catholic politicians should “talk to their pastor” about their “incoherence” with church teaching, and he repeated a familiar warning about the risks of a third world war.

Francis also answered – and, to some extent, dodged – questions about Ukraine, the…

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Pope Francis departed Rome on Sunday for a week-long trip to Edmonton, Canada, where he’s set to apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in the abuse of Canadian Indigenous children in residential schools.

The Vatican has called the trip a “penitential pilgrimage,” and the Pope will be welcomed in Edmonton on Sunday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon, the Governor General of Canada.

While in the country he will meet with Indigenous groups and address the scandal of abuse and erasure of indigenous culture in the country’s residential schools.

Indigenous leaders have long called for a papal apology for the harm inflicted for decades on Indigenous children. Last year, hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered on the grounds of former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has reported that more than 4,000 Indigenous children died…

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Pontiff to visit site of former school where indigenous children were assimilated to white culture

Pope Francis will visit the site of a former residential school for indigenous Canadian children on Monday morning, seeking to atone for the Catholic Church’s part in what a government-funded report has described as a system of cultural genocide.

The pope’s visit to Maskwacis, 60 miles from Edmonton, will be his first public appearance since his arrival in Canada on Sunday. His nearly weeklong visit to the country, which ends Friday, will be dedicated to asking forgiveness and seeking to reconcile his church with Canada’s indigenous people.

Pope Francis has made public apologies before, including for the Catholic Church’s persecution of Protestants and its failure to protect minors from sexual abuse by priests. But he has never framed an entire trip around an apology until his visit to Canada, which  View Cache

‘This is a trip of penance,’ says Pope Francis, ahead of mass to be held during five-day trip

Pope Francis landed in Canada on Sunday to kick off a five-day trip that will centre around his apology on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church for the abuse that Indigenous children endured at mostly church-run residential schools.

“This is a trip of penance. Let’s say that is its spirit,” the pope told reporters after his flight took off from Rome.

He touched down in Edmonton in the western province of Alberta, where he will visit a former residential school and meet with Indigenous people on Monday. He is also visiting Quebec City and Iqaluit, the capital of the territory of Nunavut. He will depart on Friday.

The pope said he yearned to visit Ukraine in his efforts to try to bring an end to the five-month-old war that…

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Pope Francis arrives in Canada on Sunday to apologize for the wrongs done to indigenous people by Roman Catholic priests and nuns who ran abusive residential schools.

Here are key things to know about the Pope’s week-long visit. 

WHAT HAPPENED IN CANADA’S RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS?

Between 1831 and 1996, more than 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their homes and put into residential schools run primarily by Christian churches, predominantly the Catholic church, on behalf of the government. The stated aim of the schools was to assimilate indigenous children.

Many children were subjected to rape, abuse and malnutrition in what Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 called “cultural genocide”.

HOW DID THE POPE’S TRIP COME ABOUT?

In May 2021, the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, near Kamloops, British Columbia, said they had found the suspected remains of 215 people, some as young as three years old, on the grounds of…

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Ya son tres los alumnos que denunciaron públicamente los hechos que habrían ocurrido en 2002, pero varios compañeros se comunicaron con ellos para contar que también fueron víctimas del párroco.

Dos exalumnos del colegio porteño El Salvador, perteneciente a la congregación Jesuita, denunciaron públicamente que fueron víctimas de abuso sexual en 2002, cuando estaban en sexto grado por el cura que en ese momento era el tutor del colegio, César Fretes, hoy muerto. 

Los jóvenes, que hoy tienen 31 años, presentaron un reclamo administrativo al colegio por los abusos sexuales que Fretes habría cometido cuando cursaban sexto grado, a sus 10-11 años. El objetivo es recibir una reparación por los daños psicológicos y morales causados.

Los que hicieron pública la denuncia fueron Pablo Vio y Gonzalo Elizondo hace unos días. Luego, otro exalumno, Francisco Segovia (32), los contactó para contarles que había sido víctima de Fretes en 2001.

Los tres jóvenes aseguran que más de 30 compañeros se…

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Pope Francis is set to arrive in Canada on July 24, arriving back in Rome on July 30. During his trip, he’s expected to meet with and apologize to indigenous Canadians for abuses committed at Church-run residential schools in the 20th century. 

Why this trip, and why now? Here’s what to know:

Where in Canada is Pope Francis going?

The pope’s itinerary includes stops in Edmonton, Quebec City, and Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut; there’s a depiction below. As you can see, the distances involved are nothing to sneeze at.

In Edmonton, Francis will meet with members of the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples, as well as with indigenous Catholics at Sacred Heart parish. 

Later, in Quebec City, he will meet with civil authorities, representatives of indigenous peoples, and members of the diplomatic corps. Then, the pope will depart Quebec and fly some five hours north…

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Pope Francis began a fraught visit to Canada on Sunday to apologize to Indigenous peoples for abuses by missionaries at residential schools, a key step in the Catholic Church’s efforts to reconcile with Native communities and help them heal from generations of trauma.

Francis was flying to Edmonton, Alberta, where he was to be greeted on the tarmac by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary May Simon, an Inuk who is Canada’s first Indigenous governor general. Francis had no official events scheduled Sunday, giving him time to rest before his meeting Monday with survivors near the site of a former residential school in Maskwacis, where he is expected to deliver an apology.

Indigenous groups are seeking more than just words, though, as they press for access to church archives to learn the fate of children who never returned home from the residential schools. They also want justice for…

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Pope Francis’ trip to Canada to apologize for the horrors of church-run Indigenous residential schools marks a radical rethink of the Catholic Church’s missionary legacy, spurred on by the first pope from the Americas and the discovery of hundreds of probable graves at the school sites.

Francis has said his weeklong visit, which begins Sunday, is a “penitential pilgrimage” to beg forgiveness on Canadian soil for the “evil” done to Native peoples by Catholic missionaries. It follows his April 1 apology in the Vatican for the generations of trauma Indigenous peoples suffered as a result of a church-enforced policy to eliminate their culture and assimilate them into Canadian, Christian society.

Francis’ tone of personal repentance has signaled a notable shift for the papacy, which has long acknowledged abuses in the residential schools and strongly asserted the rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples. But past popes have also hailed the sacrifice…

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To this day, Flo Buffalo doesn’t drink milk — not since two nuns force-fed her the sour milk she had refused at the Catholic-run Ermineskin Indian Residential School for Indigenous children that she attended in the 1960s.

Holding out her right hand, she showed how she has never been able to fully straighten it out since a nun severely beat her with a stick.

“The nuns, they were real mean,” Buffalo said.

With international attention focusing on the former school in the prairie town of Maskwacis as Pope Francis visits Monday to apologize for abuses in a system designed to sever Native children from their tribal, family and religious bonds, Indigenous Canadians such as Buffalo are voicing a range of skepticism, wariness and hope.

Buffalo, a member of the Samson Cree First Nation in central Alberta, doesn’t often talk about her two years at the school. But ahead of the…

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When Pope Francis arrives in Canada Sunday on his “pilgrimage of penance” to be with Canada’s Indigenous people — the First Nations, Métis and Inuit — he will take a major step toward the Church’s reconciliation for all the harms done during the residential-school era.

Father Dean Henderson, a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia, told the Register that he started working locally on healing and reconciliation after serving First Nations people in the Yukon 10 years ago. But any lasting impact of the Pope’s visit, he indicates, will depend on how the Church’s clergy and lay faithful respond by forming real, personal relationships with Indigenous people and exercising, above all, a ministry of presence in their lives. 

What are your thoughts about the Pope’s visit to Canada’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples and his hope to address the history of the Church’s involvement in the government’s…

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The lawsuit alleges child sexual abuse by Rev. Jerry McKenzie beginning in 1995 at a local Denver church and a well-known Diocesan camp for kids   The suit is believed to be among the first filed against the Episcopal Diocese under a new Colorado law allowing survivors of sexual abuse access to the courthouse for a limited time 

On July 21, 2022, Horowitz Law attorneys Adam Horowitz and Jessica Arbour filed a new child sexual abuse and coverup lawsuit against the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado.  Arbour announced the court filing in a news conference held on the steps of the Denver District Court, where she was joined by our Colorado teammate, Zach Elsner of Wilhite, Rose, McClure & Sawaya, P.C. in Denver.

According to the Complaint, the Plaintiff, identified as John HA Doe, was sexually abused by Rev. Jerry McKenzie, a former priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado, starting in…

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Michal was 21 when she went for help with infertility to Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg — an Israeli kabbalist who had a massive following of people seeking blessings and supernatural healings. After a year of counseling, the rabbi began hitting on Michal. “You are not holy enough,” he said, when she refused his advances. “Maybe I made a mistake trying to help you. I thought you were on a higher level.” In 2018 he was convicted of sexually molesting eight women, but gained early release in 2021.

Michal’s story is one of more than 80 anecdotes of abuse and harassment in the new book by Dr. Elana Sztokman, “When Rabbis Abuse: Power, Gender, and Status in the Dynamics of Sexual Abuse in Jewish Culture”  (Lioness Press).

Sztokman never set out to write a book about sexually abusive rabbis. But when the anthropologist, who grew up Modern Orthodox in Flatbush,…

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An imam appointed by Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) to a mosque in the western province of Balıkesir has been arrested on allegations of sexually abusing four boys and three girls between the ages of eight and 12, the Cumhuriyet daily reported on Saturday.

The man, who was appointed by the Diyanet as imam of a mosque in Dursunbey’s Ericek neighborhood, was arrested after an investigation was launched into him on July 7. He was detained the day after over claims that he had sexually abused seven children two months ago.

The imam, who was arrested pending trial and sent to Kepsut Prison in Balıkesir, was appointed to the post by the Balıkesir provincial director of the Diyanet three months earlier, Cumhuriyet said.

Commenting on the development, Muhammet Karakoyun, president of the Balıkesir Street Children’s Association, said it was “extremely serious and worrying,” adding that they would follow the…

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A 41-year-old Brampton religious leader faces a charge of sexual assault related to an alleged incident in May.

Peel Regional Police allege that on May 25, around 12 a.m., the victim was at her Brampton home when a man known to her, attended her residence.

It is further alleged that the man sexually assaulted the victim at this time.

That same day, officers from the force’s Special Victims Unit (SVU) charged a man with break and enter and commit an indictable offence and sexual assault.

The man served as an imam at a religious centre in Brampton, said police.about:blank

This is an ongoing investigaton with police believing there could be additional victims.

Anyone with information on this incident or any similar ones can contact the SVU at 905-453-2121 ext. 3460.

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The Church must do more for anyone affected by sexual abuse, “even when the Church can appear tarnished because of these scandals,” and no matter what the local conditions are, according to Father Andrew Small. 

The English priest is the interim secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Safeguarding of Minors, which provides recommendations and support to dioceses around the world.

In a speech delivered last week to AMECEA, the Association of Members of the Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa, he spoke about what this means for local communities and churches in Africa. 

Dealing with potential cases and safeguarding against sexual violence in the future is a moral obligation and global challenge for the Catholic Church. It spans cultures and continents, jurisdictions and authorities, and in meeting this challenge, the Church should always strive to set standards and lead by example, according to Small. 

The AMECEA plenary…

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For many survivors of Canada’s former residential school system, the apology Pope Francis is expected to deliver for the Church’s role in the abuse they endured during his visit to the country next week marks a milestone in their journey of healing.

Speaking to Crux, Steve Sutherland, a spokesman for the Métis National Council, said an apology from Pope Francis on Canadian soil will be “a significant moment.”

“It would mark the beginning of what we hope would be a renewed commitment from the Catholic Church to walking the path of truth, reconciliation, justice, and healing with the Métis Nation and all Indigenous peoples across Canada,” he said.

Similarly, Grand Chief George Arcand Jr. of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations, and Chief of the Alexander First Nation, told journalists during a July 21 press conference that “this apology is a way forward for our people in healing.”

“My mind…

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Pope Francis visited a Roman basilica on Friday to ask for the Virgin Mary’s intercession and protection ahead of his week-long trip to Canada.

The pope prayed in front of the Marian icon of Salus Populi Romani in Santa Maria Maggiore on the morning of July 22.

A photo released by the Vatican showed the pope seated in a wheelchair below the icon of Mary, Protection of the Roman People, which has been revered in the Eternal City for centuries. 

The Holy See press office said that the pope went to the basilica to entrust the Virgin Mary with his upcoming trip to Canada.

The pope is scheduled to travel to the Canadian cities of Edmonton, Quebec City, and Iqaluit from July 24-29. There he will meet members of Canadian indigenous groups, residential school abuse survivors, and Catholics.

Pope Francis is expected to issue an apology in Canada on behalf…

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COMMENTARY: The last papal trip to Canada was by Pope St. John Paul II in 1984.

On Sunday, Pope Francis will begin a papal trip utterly unique in the nearly 50 years of overseas papal travel. 

It will be a pilgrimage not to the entire Church in Canada, but tightly focused on Indigenous peoples. It will have a “penitential” character, as the Holy Father characterized it at the Angelus address last Sunday. And while most papal trips have multiple themes — history, family, youth, evangelization, justice, etc. — this one is exclusively intended to foster “reconciliation” as that term has come to be understood in Canadian politics.  

A little history is in order. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Canadians began to hear Indigenous voices speak about “Indian residential schools,” a part of Canadian history that had remained largely hidden.  

(Over recent decades the term “Indian” —…

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The latest warning by the Holy See about the risk of a new schism from Germany arising from the “Synodal Way” has been rejected and met with “astonishment” by its organizers, who in turn accused Rome of not acting like a synodal Church.

However, at least one German bishop and a reform group welcomed the new intervention from the Vatican, reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.

Following the statement by the Holy See on Thursday, the presidents of the German Bishops’ Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) said they were stunned by the intervention.

“In our understanding, a synodal Church is something else!” Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg and Irme Stetter-Karp declared in response to the Vatican’s intervention. “This also applies to the way today’s communication has been handled, which has been a source of astonishment for us.”

…

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By criticizing the procedure — but not the substance — of the Church in Germany’s push for radical departures from Catholic teaching, this week’s Vatican statement left deeper concerns unaddressed.

A clear and decisive rebuke of the German Church’s “Synodal Way” is perhaps needed now more than ever, as the process continues to hurtle toward the point of schism.  

The Synodal Way has been exposed as little more than a bald-faced attempt to subvert Church teaching in order to keep with the times — in fact, its leadership has explicitly said as much, describing it as “a conscious statement against the current Catholic catechism” that “still reproaches homosexual activity as sin.” And with the head of the German bishops’ conference publicly expressing his disappointment in Pope Francis over the Holy Father’s reticence to endorse the Synodal Way’s proposals, what’s happening in Germany…

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The victim said the abuse started in 1995 when he was 16 and occurred at St. Michael & All Angels Church, Camp Ilium, and a cabin near Nederland.

A new lawsuit claims a former priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado sexually abused a teenaged boy.

According to the complaint, the victim identified as John HA Doe, was sexually abused by the Rev. Jerry McKenzie starting in 1995 when the victim was 16. The plaintiff is now in his 40s and does private social services work in the Denver area.

“What we do know is that during the period when this abuse started and continued, that there was an ongoing practice to ignore these types of allegations, to cover them up, to threaten and silence victims, to withhold information from the people who had the ability to protect these children and to basically protect themselves in closed ranks,”…

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A Canadian court has approved the sale of 43 Catholic Church properties as part of a financial settlement with victims of sex abuse, with more sales expected to come later.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s, based in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, will sell the properties, including 13 church properties, after the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador approved the measure.

The archdiocese directed The Christian Post to a report by Ernst & Young, a law firm that served as a court-appointed monitor for selling the properties.

In its second report, the monitor noted that there were “42 sub-parcel sales” of the properties to various entities, including the Basilica Heritage Foundation Inc., Rocky Hill Holdings Inc. and Emerald Atlantic Group Inc.

Nineteen of the properties were listed as “vacant land,” with one going to the Nature Conservatory of Canada, while another went to…

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Another U.S. diocese has issued new restrictive policies regarding LGBTQ issues in Catholic schools, and the new directives compare being openly transgender with sexual abuse.

The Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, led by Bishop David Ricken, included the gender policy in its “Education Policy Manual” for the upcoming school year. The manual includes detailed instructions for how to restrict the full participation in Catholic education of trans students, staff, volunteers, and ally parents. The document also includes a section on the theology upon which they these policies are based.

Preceding most of the manual’s content is a section titled “Catholic Principles of Human Sexuality,” which promotes the idea of complementarity of the sexes, denies the legitimacy of trans identities, and supports heterosexuality as the norm. Emphasizing chastity, this section at one point compares being LGBTQ to sexual abuse:

“Behaviors that are contrary to Catholic morality and the expectations of…

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The 14-year-old girl returned on the back of a motorbike to the convent where she lived and studied. Sobbing and in pain, she pulled aside a nun.

The girl said she’d just been raped by the priest who dropped her off.

The nun, Henriette Okitanunga, tried to comfort the girl. She said she then followed the new rule laid out by Pope Francis for handling such a report: She alerted her superior to a possible crime.

“Your Excellency,” the nun recalled texting to Nicolas Djomo, the local bishop.

After clerical abuse scandals that have rocked much of the Catholic world — generally in nations with the resources to pressure and expose the church — attention is turning to regions where the scale of abuse remains both a mystery and a cause for trepidation. The Vatican’s hope is that bishops in the developing world, trained in new guidelines, can avoid the…

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After a warning from the Vatican Thursday to German bishops against stoking division through their ongoing “Synodal Path” consultation process, pioneers of the initiative have hit back, saying they were “astonished” by the rebuke and hope to discuss contentious matters in a more formal setting.

In a statement Thursday, the Vatican said Germany’s Synodal Path is a threat to Church unity at a universal level and stressed that the undertaking lacks the authority to compel bishops to make changes on doctrine or morality.

RELATED: Vatican says Germany’s ‘synodal path’ has no power to change doctrine

“In order to protect the freedom of the People of God and the exercise of episcopal ministry, it seems necessary to specify that the ‘Synodal Way’ in Germany has no power to oblige the bishops and the faithful to adopt new ways of governing and new approaches to doctrine and morals,” the Vatican said…

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The Vatican issued an official statement published in Italian and German on Thursday.

The Vatican has issued another warning of a new schism from Germany coming out of the “Synodal Way.”

“The ‘Synodal Way’ in Germany does not have the power to compel bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of governance and new orientations of doctrine and morals,” the Vatican said in an official statement published in Italian and German on Thursday.

The Holy See said it seemed “necessary to clarify” this, in order to “safeguard the freedom of the People of God and the exercise of the episcopal ministry.” 

The Vatican warned: “It would not be permissible to introduce new official structures or doctrines in dioceses before an agreement had been reached at the level of the universal Church, which would constitute a violation of ecclesial communion and a threat to the unity of the Church.”

The “Synodal…

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Phil Fontaine says Pope Francis must offer expanded apology during visit to Canada next week

Phil Fontaine says Pope Francis must expand on his apology for residential schools when he visits Canada next week.

But the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations also wants people to know that an apology is not “the end of the story, it’s just the beginning.”

“We still have so much work to do to heal the past and to bring about true reconciliation. We ourselves have to forgive. Otherwise, the story never ends,” said Fontaine, who was AFN national chief from 1997 to 2000 and from 2003 to 2009.

“And I believe that many, many people want to see this story end on a more positive note,” he told The Current’s guest host Duncan McCue.

The Pope will visit Canada next week, in what he recently described as a “pilgrimage of penance” through…

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Pope Francis is set to fly to Canada on Sunday for his 37th Apostolic Visit abroad. He’ll be travelling to the Canadian cities of Edmonton, Quebec, and Iqaluit, where the Holy Father will bring his closeness to indigenous peoples who suffered from attempts to erase their culture, especially in the residential schools system.

Pope Francis’ imminent Apostolic Visit to Canada will be first of all a penitential pilgrimage geared at healing and reconciliation with the nation’s indigenous peoples, suggests the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, noting this follows the Pontiff’s five encounters with the aboriginal peoples in Rome in April.

During a briefing at the Press Office on Wednesday, the Director presented the Pope’s 37th Apostolic Visit abroad. The North American nation will be the 56th country he’s visited. Pope Francis is following in the footsteps of his predecessor, St. John Paul II who visited Canada three…

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Sr. Eileen McKenzie had always been proud of her congregation’s nearly nine decades of ministering to Indigenous people through their school in northern Wisconsin.

But in the summer of 2020, McKenzie, the president of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, got an email from the La Crosse County Historical Society saying its magazine was going to publish a story about the school’s legacy. St. Mary’s Catholic Indian Boarding School operated on a reservation in Odanah, Wisconsin, from 1883 to 1969. The historical society wanted to let McKenzie know about the article because the topic was so sensitive.

“I went, ‘What? This is sensitive?’ ” McKenzie recalled. “I went online and Googled it, and the first article was … about St. Mary’s. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ “

The 2019 story, “Death by Civilization,” details the trauma the…

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First Nations leaders call for financial support, release of records, return of artifacts

Marie-Anne Day Walker-Pelletier, a former chief of the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan, will be attentive to Pope Francis’ words during his trip to Canada and to the church’s actions in the wake of the historic visit. She’ll also be watchful for one simple act.

This spring, Walker-Pelletier was part of the delegation of Indigenous Canadians who traveled to the Vatican and met the pope. While there, she gave Francis two pairs of small moccasins. “He knows he needs to bring them back when he apologizes here,” the 68-year-old Walker-Pelletier told NCR.

“It’s not about the moccasins. It’s about the graves of the children who were never found, the kids who were abused, raped and died at residential schools, the babies who were incinerated.” The shoes “are a symbol of the children who never came…

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When pope touches down in Edmonton, the first hands he shakes will be those of Indigenous people

In 2010, the headline “Why Being Pope Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry,” splashed across the cover of Time magazine, exploring the general reluctance of popes to own up to the Catholic Church’s past wrongs.

But on July 24, Pope Francis will travel some 5,000 miles from Rome to Canada to do just that.

As Francis prepares to embark on his 37th international trip as pope, a very different kind of visit is being planned for this high-stakes journey, where he is expected to apologize to the country’s Indigenous peoples for abuses at Catholic-run residential schools.

When he touches down in Edmonton, Alberta, Francis will find a dramatically altered scene than that of past airport arrivals. Gone will be the jubilant sights and sounds of marching bands and…

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Pope Francis said on Sunday his trip to Canada next week will be a “pilgrimage of penance” that he hopes can help heal the wrongs done to indigenous people by Roman Catholic priests and nuns who ran abusive residential schools.

The July 24-30 trip will include at least five encounters with native people as Francis makes good on a promise to apologise on their home territory for the Church’s role in the state-sanctioned schools, which sought to erase indigenous cultures.

“Unfortunately in Canada many Christians, including some members of religious orders, contributed to the policies of cultural assimilation that in the past gravely damaged native populations in various ways,” Francis said at his weekly address to people in St. Peter’s Square.

About 150,000 children were taken from their homes. Many were subjected to abuse, rape and malnutrition in what Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 called “cultural genocide”.

The…

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When Pope Francis arrives in Canada Sunday to continue reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, he must deliver more than an apology for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system, say Brock University experts.

The Pope will meet with Indigenous communities in Alberta, Quebec and Nunavut from July 24 to 29 and is expected to issue an apology while on Canadian soil — one of 94 Calls to Action laid out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“Action must follow words,” says Brock University Assistant Professor of Education Stanley ‘Bobby’ Henry, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory community.

“It’s a repeating pattern for organizations, agencies and governments to follow an apology with concrete action that results in meaningful change, but this has not always been the case,” he says. “Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of Canada and Canadians but later argued that Canada…

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Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations says visit has been poorly co-ordinated

Warning: This story contains distressing details

The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) says it is “deeply concerned” over a lack of consultation on Pope Francis’s upcoming visit to Canada.

The Pope will be in Canada from July 24 to July 29 and will stop in Edmonton, Quebec City and Iqaluit. The trip is focused on healing and reconciliation with First Nations, Inuit and Métis people for harm caused by the Roman Catholic Church’s operation of government-funded residential schools. 

FSIN, which represents Saskatchewan’s 74 First Nations, said in a statement issued Monday that the visit has been poorly co-ordinated by Canada and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB). 

“We had zero consultation on his pilgrimage to ground zero on our own lands. Many survivors don’t have the agency, money or even technology to attend the Pope’s visit,” said FSIN Chief…

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Project would take two years, consult Elders and archives to identify sites

Warning: This story discusses children missing at residential schools. 

Dene Nation is proposing to search 15 residential school sites in the North for unmarked burial sites, a plan which brought up complicated and difficult emotions about what this undertaking will mean for survivors and the family of missing children.

Elder and former Tulita chief Paul Andrew told the Dene Nation assembly, gathered just outside of Yellowknife this week, that he hopes the project brings closure to his family.

Andrew was at residential school for seven years, and his grandmother passed away without knowing what happened to her two daughters.

“I have often wondered what happened to them. Is it possible I have cousins somewhere in the world? Or is that it?”

“It’s very possible that it will settle my soul if we are able to answer some of those questions,”…

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Edna Elias would like to see Arctic communities participate in project

Nunavut educator and politician Edna Elias wants Arctic groups to apply to a government fund dedicated to monuments honouring residential school survivors, and children who never returned home. 

Elias, from Kugluktuk, N.W.T., works with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and is involved in administering a new grant, funded through the federal government, that allows communities to apply for money to design and create memorials honouring community histories of residential schools. 

The grant is called the Na-mi-quai-ni-mak Community Support Fund. Na-mi-quai-ni-mak is Anishinaabemowin and means “I remember them.”

With this funding — up to $10,000 — communities can design and create any sort of commemorative marker honouring survivors, families and those who did not make it home. 

Elias listed monuments and peace gardens as ideas for applications. 

She said that any Indigenous government, band council or survivor group in Canada can…

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For whom did Pope Francis really organize his July 24-29 trip to Canada?

In general, these papal visits primarily concern Catholics and may not hold much interest for the general population. With stops in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Que., Edmonton, Maskwacis, Alta., and Iqaluit, this tour appears to be aimed primarily at Indigenous peoples: its purpose is to apologize on behalf of the Catholic Church for its involvement in Indian Residential Schools.

Indeed, of the 139 residential schools recognized by the legal definition of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), approximately 60 per cent were run by Catholics. It makes sense, then, for Indigenous communities to be the primary audience for this visit.

Should the rest of Canada overlook the visit? On the contrary, I believe the whole country should be concerned by what’s at stake. I have every reason to to feel concerned: I am an anthropologist and have been doing…

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Three Cree sons and daughters of survivors share their perspectives

WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

Deep-seated hurt and pockets of hope. 

These are among the complicated emotions rippling through an Indigenous community in central Alberta where Pope Francis is expected to deliver an apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential schools.

“For the amount of trauma … some of us maybe put deep down in ourselves and didn’t want to deal with it and now it’s all coming back out,” said Luci Johnson, a member of the Samson Cree Nation who helps people navigate the court system around Maskwacis, Alta.

“And those are the things that no ‘sorry’ — [a] five-letter word — is ever going to make us heal.”

Pope Francis will be in Canada from July 24 to 29. 

On Monday, the first full day of his trip, the Pope will…

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‘A way for us to reconcile a path that was filled with hurts,’ says one woman heading south

The residential school system has been a large part of Mabel Brown’s family story.

At six years old, her mother was sent to St. Peter’s Indian Residential School in Hay River, N.W.T.

Brown herself also attended residential schools along with her eight siblings. She bounced around from Stringer Hall in Inuvik to Bompas Hall in Fort Simpson, and then to Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife where she eventually graduated.

And that has left a lasting impact on her family to this day, according to the Inuvik resident.

“When I got triggered, it went on to my daughter and then trickled down to my grandson who is 25 right now,” said Brown who is Gwich’in.

“So the evidence is there. You can see the way we are, our behaviours and how we walk through…

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Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples was rededicated this weekend following a fire nearly 2 years ago

A historic Catholic church in Edmonton is ready for a visit from Pope Francis following a devastating fire two years ago.

With just a week before the Pope is scheduled to arrive, Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples reopened its doors for the first time in two years. 

The church celebrated the rededication on Sunday and held its first mass since August 2020 to the delight of parishioners and clergy alike.

• Fire at historic Edmonton church ignited by smouldering sage in coffee can

Father Cristino Bouvette, national liturgical co-ordinator for the papal visit, said he was amazed at how quickly the work was done. 

“The first day I saw it, compared to what it looks like now that it’s been dedicated, is nothing short of a miracle,” said Bouvette,…

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The Vatican Museums are home to some of the most magnificent artworks in the world, from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel to ancient Egyptian antiquities and a pavilion full of papal chariots. But one of the museum’s least-visited collections is becoming its most contested before Pope Francis’ trip to Canada.

The Vatican’s Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum, located near the food court and right before the main exit, houses tens of thousands of artifacts and art made by Indigenous peoples from around the world, much of it sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens.

The Vatican says the feathered headdresses, carved walrus tusks, masks and embroidered animal skins were gifts to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the Church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.

But Indigenous groups from Canada, who were shown a few items in the…

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A First Nations woman says she is disappointed a 92-year-old priest accused of assaulting her when she was a student at a former residential school did not attend his first court appearance.

“What a coward,” said Victoria McIntosh, 63, outside a legion hall where court was held in Powerview-Pine Falls, north of Winnipeg, on Wednesday. 

“I don’t care how old you are. You could have made it here if you wanted to.”

Arthur Masse faces one count of indecent assault from when the woman was 10 and attended the Fort Alexander Residential School in Manitoba.

His lawyer appeared in court on his behalf, which is not uncommon for a first appearance, and the Crown said the priest’s age was a factor. A next court date was set for Aug. 17. 

McIntosh said she had hoped Masse would be there so she could face him for the first time in more…

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Days before Pope Francis visits Canada, the vice provincial of the Jesuit Province of Canada speaks candidly about reconciliation.

ho are the missing Aboriginal children? What is the reality of residential school cemeteries? What is the Church doing to promote justice and reconciliation?

Days before Pope Francis’s “penitential journey” to the country (July 24-30, 2022), the vice provincial of the Jesuit province of Canada, Father Gilles Mongeau, S.J., sheds light on the history of relations between settlers and their descendants and indigenous peoples.

How are the Jesuits involved in the process of reconciliation with the indigenous peoples?

We began the path of reconciliation in the early 1990s, when we committed ourselves to making financial restitution and making our resources available. For example, we had many dictionaries, which we made available to help indigenous communities recover their traditional languages. The destruction of indigenous languages was one of the features of the residential schools….

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A priest who assaulted children was seen by his Archdiocese as “struggling” rather than abusive, a report found.

Joseph Quigley, a former Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, was jailed last year.

A report by Barnado’s found the church was aware of concerns but did not listen to victims, challenge his behaviour or deal with complaints.

The authors made 18 recommendations which the Archdiocese accepted in full. It apologised for its failures.

The report said concerns had been raised about Quigley, from Staffordshire, as early as 1990.

There was evidence the church was aware of an “immoral relationship” while he was working in Warwickshire but it was not considered a safeguarding issue because the boy was 16.

“The view of [Quigley’s] behaviour, being that of a Catholic priest who had a ‘relationship’ with another adult male, rather than an abuser of an adolescent boy, persisted without any challenge,” the…

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He spent 17 years as a priest in exile, railing against what he said were the misdeeds and cover-ups of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, until the Vatican finally cut him loose in March.

Months later, Tim Stier delivered his final salvo: a scorching “farewell letter” that condemned several bishops, criticized the Catholic clergy for retrograde attitudes toward gender equity and LGBTQ civil rights, and cited specific allegations of sexual abuse that Stier says the church ignored or tried to conceal.

His missive became a new flare-up for an institution grappling with public controversies over abortion and civil rights, and with the fallout from a painful history of abuse that has jolted parishes throughout the country.

“Dear No-Longer-Fellow Priests,” it began, “this will likely be my farewell letter to most of you, which may be glad tidings to those of you who did not enjoy hearing from me.”

In…

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A Manitoba woman travelled three hours hoping to hear and see the retired priest charged with sexually abusing her at a residential school in the late 1960s appear in a small town courtroom.

“I’m going to be here every step of the way,” said Victoria McIntosh, 63 of Somerset, Man. outside the Legion Hall in Powerview-Pine Falls, Man. Wednesday which serves as the courthouse in the community. “I didn’t deserve that at 10 years old. No child does.”

McIntosh clutched a jacket her grandmother gave her on her first day of school and showed up to the court with her husband and grandson at her side.

Other supporters, including community members from the nearby Sagkeeng First Nation, gathered outside the building for a short ceremony and drumming before the court hearing began.

About 30 people filled the hall, with most in attendance to observe the court case against Arthur Masse,…

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