A Canadian Pope? Part 2: the State of Northern Catholicism

Vancouver Sun
February 23, 2013

http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/02/23/a-canadian-pope-part-2-the-state-of-northern-catholicism/

If Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet is elected pope, what would the world discover about Canadian Catholicism?

Here are some of the answers: ...

A LEGACY OF ABUSE STILL UNRAVELLING

While he was Pope, Benedict never made it to Canada. However, he did travel in 2008 to the U.S., where he apologized for his priests’ role in the sex abuse scandal.

High-level Catholic leaders, including New York’s Dolan, have admitted to covering up chronic abuse.

Catholic officials have admitted there have been, since the 1950s, more than 6,100 accused U.S. priests.

What’s different in Canada? The debacle over sex abuse by priests exploded in the U.S. in the past 15 years.

But Canadian bishops had brought in measures to curtail it during the early 1990s, as hundreds of priests, brothers and Catholic school staff were being convicted of molestation.

They had to respond to Catholic abuse cases that came out of Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland and from survivors of now-defunct Catholic-run residential schools, which housed and educated more than 100,000 aboriginals during the 20th century.

The Canadian Catholic Church, as a whole, has received widespread criticism for refusing to formally apologize for abuse at the schools.