The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) on Monday pledged $ 30 million “to support healing and reconciliation initiatives for residential school survivors, their families and their communities.”
The envelope will have a duration of 5 years. A “national strategy” and “timelines” will be presented to the public in November.
Each project will be chosen “locally, in consultation with the First Nations, Métis and Inuit of each region”.
“The bishops of Canada have been guided by the principle that we should not speak of Indigenous peoples without taking care to speak with them. To this end, present discussions with local leaders will be useful in discerning which programs will provide the most effective support, ”CCCB Vice President Bishop William McGrattan said in a statement.
“There is nothing that can take away the pain felt by residential school survivors,” he added. But by listening to each other, cultivating relationships of trust, and working collaboratively where we can, we hope to learn to walk together for renewed hope. “
The president of the CCCB, Bishop Raymond Poisson, expressed his confidence that the projects thus funded will “improve the lives of residential school survivors and their communities, by guaranteeing the necessary resources to undertake the journey of The healing “.
He mentioned a “unanimous consensus” among the bishops that “Catholic institutions must do more and in an even more concrete way to remedy the suffering caused by residential schools in Canada”.
The announcement follows an official apology made on Friday by the CCCB. “With the Catholic entities who were directly involved in the operation of the residential schools, and who have already offered their own sincere apologies, we, the Catholic Bishops of Canada, we express our deep remorse and we offer an unequivocal apology”, had- they then said.
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