“Meaningful apology”, publication of crucial documents for the Pope’s visit to Canada, says the head of Tk’emlúps | The Canadian News

The head of BC First Nation, where the anonymous graves of 215 children were discovered in a former residential school in May, hopes that an apology and promise to release key documents will be the result of the pope’s upcoming visit to Canada.

“Our hope is that he comes to Kamloops,” Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Kúkpi7 Rosanne Casimir told Global News.

“Who listens to our elders and survivors. And, you know, part of the intergenerational trauma that has impacted many of us, hearing those stories and those truths as well. And come up with a meaningful apology. “

On Wednesday, the Vatican said Pope Francis would travel to Canada at a date yet to be determined “in the context of the long pastoral process of reconciliation with indigenous peoples.”

The announcement comes amid a national reckoning over the legacy of Canada’s residential schools, institutions designed by the federal government and operated by religious groups, including the Catholic Church, to assimilate indigenous children.

Many of these children suffered severe physical and sexual abuse, and since the revelation of the graves at the Tk’emlúps school, a total of 1,300 suspicious graves have been discovered across the country.

A papal apology for the church’s role in residential schools is among 94 calls to action set out in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report in 2015 as a roadmap to reconciliation.

Casimir has voiced her call for an apology and said she was surprised the Pope had not yet committed to one on his planned trip to Canada. The First Nation has invited Pope Francis to visit their community when he arrives in Canada.

She and a delegation of indigenous leaders are scheduled to travel to the Vatican in December to meet with the Pope, where he said they will raise the issue of apologies.

“It would be about acknowledging those truths and having a clear understanding of what those truths are by listening to them,” he said of the long-lasting traumas that residential school survivors and their children continue to grapple with.

“He has apologized all over the world, but not yet in Canada. So I think it would be a significant step in that direction. “

But an apology, Casimir said, is just a starting point.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc and other indigenous nations that suffered under the residential school system still do not have full access to the documents and records they need to bring closure to survivors and their families.

There is also a long way to go locally with Canadian dioceses, he said.

“There is more work that is going to be done … on those relationships and building them because a lot of our people are still practicing Catholicism,” he said.

“For many, this has also affected people’s faith.”