CANADA
The Globe and Mail
GLORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Apr. 22, 2016
The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations says he will urge the Pope to press Catholic groups that ran Canada’s Indian residential schools to renew their efforts to raise money for healing programs that he says could provide real help to those who were abused.
Perry Bellegarde has been trying for some time to arrange a meeting with the Pope to ask for an apology for the church’s role in what happened at the schools, and also for a repudiation of the church’s 1493 papal bull and its “doctrine of discovery,” which gave Christian explorers the right to claim any lands they found that weren’t inhabited by Christians.
“So this is a third reason, because there’s a moral obligation on behalf of the church to do what’s right,” Mr. Bellegarde said this week of the failed fundraising bid. “I am going to be writing to Pope Francis and asking him to rectify this matter.”
The more than 50 Catholic orders that ran many of the schools were allowed to walk away from their commitment, written into the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, to try to raise $25-million for healing programs – a pledge crafted to demonstrate the church’s interest in reconciliation.
Pierre Baribeau, their lawyer, says they did their best – that a professional fundraising firm was engaged to run a national campaign to collect money, mostly from corporations but also from Catholic organizations. It was, in his words, “a fiasco.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.