Two indigenous women protested the Catholic Church just before Pope Francis was to celebrate Mass on the final day of his trip to Canada, where he intended to make amends with indigenous communities.
The protest occurred at the National Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre in Quebec City before the Mass was to begin. The banner the women held said “rescind the doctrine,” a reference to the doctrine of discovery, which activists say legitimized the seizure of land when Europeans were settling in the West.
POPE FRANCIS APOLOGIZES FOR ‘EVIL COMMITTED’ IN CANADIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS
One of the main goals of the pope’s trip to Canada was to apologize to indigenous communities for the Catholic Church’s role in residential schools in Canada, where indigenous children were taken from their families and made to assimilate to European values and ways of living.
Some leaders felt Francis’s apologies did not go far enough in acknowledging the church’s wrongdoing and should rescind a 15th century papal decree that gave European countries religious rationale for expanding their Western territories.
Murray Sinclair, the chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, was appreciative of the pope’s apology while calling for him to acknowledge the church’s role in the schools in a Tuesday statement.
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“It is important to underscore that the Church was not just an agent of the state, nor simply a participant in government policy, but was a lead co-author of the darkest chapters in the history of this land,” Sinclair said. “Driven by the Doctrine of Discovery and other Church beliefs and doctrines, Catholic leaders not only enabled the Government of Canada, but pushed it even further in its work to commit cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada investigates the past actions of the country against indigenous people.
