Pope Francis' visit to Canada will be no easy feat, but will be of great importance

National Post, 28 October 2021

Since Pope Paul VI started the practice of foreign papal trips, which were subsequently turbo-charged by Pope John Paul II, it is often thought that hosting the pope is routine. Not so.

That Pope Francis will visit Canada to foster reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is bigger news than many think, and how it will be done is more complicated than many think.

Since Pope Paul VI started the practice of foreign papal trips, which were subsequently turbo-charged by Pope John Paul II, it is often thought that hosting the pope is routine. Not so.

Outside of Latin America, and aside from major Christian gatherings like World Youth Day, Pope Francis simply does not visit the world’s richest countries. In Europe, he has visited Romania and Bulgaria, but not Germany or Spain. He has not visited his native Argentina.

He only visited the United States because of the Catholic World Meeting of Families. He prefers the “peripheries,” as he calls them, to the major centres. He likes to go to countries that have never had a papal visit before.

So when, in 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) called for Pope Francis to appear in Canada within the year to offer an apology related to residential schools, it was not a likely proposition.

The issue wasn’t the apology. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the comprehensive apology made by the Oblate religious order, which ran most of the residential schools assigned by the federal government to the Catholic Church, including the one in Kamloops, B.C.

In the intervening years, there have been dozens of subsequent apologies from various Catholic entities. In 2009, a delegation of Canadian Indigenous leaders met with Pope Benedict XVI in what was then widely recognized by mainstream, Indigenous and Catholic media as the apology from the Catholic Church for residential schools.

Pope Francis, for his part, offered his own apology for abuses against Indigenous peoples when he was in Bolivia in 2015, not long before the TRC’s final report was issued.

In 2017, Pope Francis said that he had no plans to visit Canada, so he would not be able to “personally respond” to the TRC. Instead, a new series of meetings began between Catholic bishops and Indigenous leaders to repeat the papal encounter that had taken place with Benedict XVI in 2009. That Vatican meeting was supposed to have taken place in 2020, but was delayed by the pandemic. It will take place this December instead.

Meanwhile, residential schools returned to public prominence this past summer. The intensity of feeling against the Catholic Church was manifested, in part, by a string of arsons and vandalism of Catholic churches, which were roundly condemned by Indigenous leaders. Reconciliation clearly required a reset.

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