The Catholic Church admits its mistakes in the agreement signed with the Canadian indigenous people

Toronto (Canada), April 1 (EFE) – The Catholic Church has acknowledged its “past mistakes” for the role it played in Canada's residential schools, where 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly detained and thousands suffered abuse.

The “Holy Covenant” into which he was admitted, the first of its kind in Canada, was announced Monday and signed on Easter Sunday in a special ceremony by the Archdiocese of Vancouver and the Diocese of Kamloops (in western Canada). With the original Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc collection.

The diocese noted that Pope Francis sent a message before signing the agreement in which he expressed “his hope that this generous gesture will be another step on the path to truth and reconciliation.”

The agreement “clarifies the ‘doctrine of discovery’ by affirming the dignity and rights of indigenous peoples, and rejecting past injustices,” the diocese and the Tekmeloup said in a joint statement.

In 2023, the Vatican abandoned the “Doctrine of Discovery”, the ideology that had supported the colonization of America and Africa since the 15th century “in the name of God” by the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal.

The Sacred Covenant also stipulates obligations such as the remembrance of indigenous students who were sent to residential schools, as well as the Catholic Church facilitating access to historical records to uncover the “truth” of what happened in residential schools.

Tk'emlúps President Rosanne Casimir noted that the Archdiocese of Vancouver and the Diocese of Kamloops “have made it clear that they are embarking on this new journey of truth, justice and healing” with the Indigenous group.

In 2021, Casimir announced that about 215 unmarked graves, believed to contain the remains of Indigenous children, had been discovered on the grounds of a boarding school maintained by the Catholic Church in Kamloops between 1890 and 1969.

The boarding school was run by order of the missionaries of Mary Immaculate.

At the end of the 19th century, the Canadian government established a system of residential schools in which approximately 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly interned over more than a century with the aim of assimilating the Indigenous population.

In these hostels, run mostly by Catholics and Protestants, Aboriginal children suffered physical, psychological and sexual abuse. About 4,000 minors died.

In 2022, Pope Francis traveled to Canada to personally apologize to the country's indigenous people for abuses committed by “quite a few Catholics” in residential schools. Evie

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