Pope Francis attends a meeting with former boarding school students at Nakasuk Elementary School in Iqaluit on July 29, 2022. VATICAN MEDIA/Reuters
In Iqaluit, Pope Francis’ final stop on his historic six-day tour of Canada, his address to young people and Inuit elders in an elementary school square alternated between expressing regret for the sins of the Catholic Church and offering encouraging advice to girls and boys. looking for direction.
His journey to Canada, from Alberta to Quebec to Nunavut, focused on addressing the traumatic legacy of residential schools and colonization. On Monday, near the site of a former dormitory in Maskwacis, Alta., the pope acknowledged that many Christians have oppressed indigenous peoples, including through cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the residential school system. On Wednesday in Quebec City, the pope apologized again.
On Friday, he met with several survivors of an Iqaluit school before an outdoor performance featuring traditional throat singing and drumming. His speech to hundreds began with another apology for the “evil perpetuated” on indigenous people by members of the church. Speaking in his native Spanish, Francis’ speech was translated into English and Inuktitut. He told them he was sorry in Inuktitut, a meaningful gesture for many in the audience.
“Thank you for having the courage to tell your stories and share your great suffering, which I could not imagine,” he said in Spanish. “It only renewed in me the outrage and shame I had felt for months.”
The pope’s tour encouraged healing for some school survivors and anger for others.
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Back in March, Francis met with First Nations, Métis and Inuit representatives at the Vatican, including survivors. After those meetings, he said he regretted the “disgusting behavior” of church members who abused children in dormitories and vowed to visit Canada.
Many local leaders and survivors hoped he would expand on his words during his Canadian visit and issue an institutional apology. Although he has repeatedly expressed deep sorrow and shame for the actions of many Catholic members and institutions, he has not apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in overseeing schools that were funded by governments.
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on the pope to apologize to Canada for the church’s role in schools.
Early Friday, before his flight to Iqaluit, Pope Francis held a private meeting with a local delegation at the residence of the Archbishop of Quebec, Cardinal Gérald Lacroix. After the meeting, Ghislaine Piccard, regional head of the Assembly of First Nations for Quebec/Labrador, said that everyone will decide for themselves whether the pope’s trip met their expectations.
“It’s really up to them to evaluate all of this, whether it will provide that kind of avenue for their healing,” Mr Pickard said after the meeting. “It will take time.”
For Johnny Kollock, 60, the pope’s remarks this week did not go far enough. As he awaited Francis’ final remarks in Iqaluit, he said the pope appeared to be letting the Catholic Church as a whole off the hook for the serial abuse it was responsible for at boarding schools.
“It seems he doesn’t want to name the church itself in these crimes,” said Mr. Kollock, a local property manager for an Inuit company. “We have a lot of people who were taken away from here. The nuns and priests who are still around and who participated in these abuses must be held accountable.”
Francis’ brief visit to Nunavut’s capital marked the first visit by a pope to the territory. Organizers had dressed the event’s stage to resemble a qammaq, a type of traditional Inuit home often made of sod for a foundation, animal bones for structure and sealskin for a covering.
A reconstructed qammaq, a traditional Inuit home made with a sod foundation, animal bone structure and sealskin covering, sits atop a hill in Qaummaarviit Territorial Park on July 27. Kate Wilkinson/The Globe and Mail
It was the kind of home that Piita Irnik, a former Nunavut commissioner, lived in seasonally with her family while growing up in Naujaat (formerly Repulse Bay). In 1958, at the age of 11, Mr. Irnick was taken from his parents by Catholic priests and flown to school in Chesterfield Inlet, at the northwest end of Hudson Bay.
“I had never been on a plane before I was taken away from my parents,” the 75-year-old, who now travels the world sharing his knowledge of Inuit culture, told The Globe and Mail in an interview earlier this week.
Mr. Irnick expected the ceremony with the pope to be an “important” occasion for the Inuit, a chance to showcase a culture that has withstood decades of attempts to destroy it by several institutions in Canada, including the Catholic Church. Kate Wilkinson/The Globe and Mail
At Sir Joseph Bernier Day School, he and the other students were forbidden to use their Inuit dialects. He recalled a time when a nun painfully hit his open palm with a long ruler because he was speaking Inuktitut to his peers.
Mr. Irnick expected the ceremony with the pope to be an “important” occasion for the Inuit, a chance to showcase a culture that has withstood decades of attempts to destroy it by several institutions in Canada, including the Catholic Church.
“He will see our culture. He will hear our language,” said Mr Irniq, who, in addition to taking part in the private audience with the Pope, also performed a drum dance for the crowd gathered outside Nakasuk Primary School.
Mary Ituluk, who is from Taloyaoc, was at the private audience for residential school survivors with the pope before the public event. In 1959, Mrs. Eetoolook, along with her brother, was taken to the Sir Alexander Mackenzie School in Inuvik when she was 8 years old.
Of the pope coming specifically to Iqaluit, she said, “That’s the reason I’m not going south to Edmonton or anywhere else. I wanted to stand on the land of Nunavut, in my homeland, when he apologized. And I’m glad you came.
“I’m here because of my parents, because my parents had no way of saying no.” Even if they said no, they would still take us. They were going to put us on a plane and take us away.
Another surviving attendee was Paul Quasa, former premier of Nunavut. Mr. Quasa was not allowed to see or speak to his two sisters while he and his siblings attended Joseph Bernier School, except for the occasional postponement of that rule on some weekends.
In an interview with The Globe earlier this week, he recalled the influence that both Catholic and Anglican missionaries had on his home community of Iglulik, located on a small island off the northeast coast of the Kikiktaaluk region in northern Nunavut.
“It was one community that was split in two. Igloolik was more like Northern Ireland in the 1960s, family against family, because of religion,” Mr Quasa said. “So they tried to destroy us, but they failed. They never succeeded.”
Mr. Quasa was the lead negotiator of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement that led to the creation of the territory in 1999. He said his experience at the Chesterfield Inlet Residential School led him to fight for self-sufficiency and self-determination in the Inuit.
“That’s why we have Nunavut,” he said. “To make sure our future generations never have to go through what we went through when we weren’t allowed to speak our own language.”
As the last leg of the Pope’s tour of Canada, the visit to Iqaluit also raised the question of what comes next.
Although it was an emotional moment, Mr Kwasa welcomed the pope’s apology in Maskwatzis on Monday, which he watched on television from Iqaluit. However, “[Francis] stressed that the Canadian Catholic bishops should follow up on some of these actions that need to be taken,” he noted.
According to him, that means bringing retired Roman Catholic priest Johannes Rivoir to Canada. For years, survivors in northern Canada have alleged that Mr. Rivoir engaged in a pattern of sexual abuse at multiple Catholic schools over several decades.
In March, Mr. Rivoir, now 93, was charged with sexual assault in a Canadian arrest warrant by RCMP in Nunavut. On Wednesday, the federal justice minister confirmed that an extradition request had been sent to France, where Mr Rivoire currently lives.
“We need justice,” Mr Kwasa said. “We know very well that many of these perpetrators are gone. Even if we see one or two, I think that will satisfy us, for the living. Because no parent would ever want their children to be put in such a situation. It’s criminal. It’s humiliating.”
With a report from The Canadian Press
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