Pope’s visit to Canada comes in wake of U.S. report on boarding schools

A federal report May 11 found that for 150 years hundreds of government-supported boarding schools in the United States — some run by the Catholic Church, including in Minnesota — sought to forcefully assimilate Native American and Indigenous children into white society.

As Pope Francis apologizes in Canada July 24-29 for Church involvement in boarding schools and other forms of assimilation in that country, many observers hope that will radiate to the United States and other nations.

Oneida First Nation activist Daisee Francour and her colleagues at the U.S.-based international Indigenous nongovernmental organization Cultural Survival told The Catholic Register in Toronto that they will pay close attention to the pope’s actions.

“An apology for one nation, in a way it’s a win for all of our nations,” said Francour. “When I say nation, I mean that as an Indigenous community — not necessarily the nation state or colonial state.

“There’s a huge opportunity, because the Catholic Church is just such an influential institution globally,” she said. “There’s a huge opportunity to leverage, influence and push nation states like the U.S. government to join this collective process for justice, toward truth and toward healing.”

In May, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis immediately acknowledged the U.S. report with sadness and an apology. In a statement posted on the archdiocese’s website, the archbishop said in part, “It is an important first step in what I anticipate will be a painful but necessary journey for our country and for our Church.”

The archbishop noted that the archdiocese has begun working with tribes on relationship building and records review, an effort described in a special report in the April 28 issue of The Catholic Spirit. The review and The Catholic Spirit stories include information on the archdiocese’s operation of an industrial school near Clontarf, in western Minnesota, that collaborated from 1884 to 1892 with the federal program for Indian boarding school students.

The archbishop also noted in his May 11 statement about the U.S. report that Pope Francis had met in April with Indigenous leaders from Canada to discuss their own experience of boarding schools, and expressed feelings of sorrow and shame for the role a number of Catholics played in those schools.

“Please allow me to also add my heartfelt apology to that of Pope Francis,” Archbishop Hebda said May 11. “I am sorry. I am sorry for the role that our Church played as part of the U.S. government’s systemic separation of families, often leading to the intergenerational trauma experienced by so many of our sisters and brothers. There are women and men in our Archdiocese and across our state who personally experienced the boarding school system. They are with us now. Their stories must be told and we must listen to them. We must also listen to the voices of the children and grandchildren whose ancestors endured such pain and death.”