No ‘Mea’ and No ‘Culpa’

In this week’s Camino a Ítaca I take a trip back to the tundra and where I’m from to look at Pope Francis’ Not-Really-Sorry tour of Canada. Click over to read the original in Spanish in el HOY or have a look at the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

I’m from the last big city you pass as you head up into
the great expanses of the Canadian north. It’s one of the northernmost cities
in the world with a population of over a million people, lying at around the
same latitude as Moscow. It’s a city that few have heard of and even fewer have
visited and usually only makes the news during the winter to say that it is one
of the coldest places on earth. That is until last week.

I watched in surprise as journalists from CNN, Aljazeera
and the BBC reported from the river valley where I grew up. National newspapershere in Spain featured places I knew well and for a brief moment the place I
used to call home was a prominent feature on the 24-hour news cycle.

My hometown was introduced to the world as Jorge Maria
Bergoglio, better known as Pope Francis, came for a visit.

This, however, wasn’t one
of the standard pastoral visits designed to simply give believers a chance to
see the head of the church. This was a trip with a different purpose. One that was
only undertaken after years of repeatedly being asked to do so. He came with
the stated intention to apologize directly
and personally to indigenous peoples for the Catholic Church’s role in the government
funded residential school system. A
Canadian system that was imposed on Indigenous peoples as part of a broad set
of assimilation efforts to destroy their rich cultures and identities and to
suppress their histories. It was a system that existed until the late 1990s and
one that the Canadian government has described as cultural genocide in their
truth and reconciliation commission.

The brutal sexual,
emotional and psychological abuse inflicted on the institutions’ inmates has
been investigated and documented for years. But it was the recent discovery of
hundreds of unmarked children’s graves found on the grounds of schools across
the country that drove indigenous leaders to travel to the Vatican to ask the
Pope directly for some sort of recognition and accountability.

After decades of requests,
the church finally relented. Anticipation was high as the Argentinian landed on
the great plains and many believers and non-believers alike eagerly attended
the open-air meeting to hear the apology they had so long waited for.

But no institutional mea
culpa was to be found. Instead they got a tepid apology ‘for the wrong done by so many
Christians to the Indigenous peoples.’ There was no mention of the thousands of
cases of sexual abuse and no hint at the perhaps thousands of graves still
waiting to be uncovered. According to the church, it shared no institutional
responsibility and these grotesque acts were the misdoings of private
individuals.

Even though Indigenous people from coast-to-coast
had been calling for papal bulls that make up the Doctrine of Discovery, which
is in effect a doctrine of colonization, to be rescinded, the Pope completely
avoided any mention of culpability.

Seen from
afar, this complete dereliction of responsibility could be expected. After all,
this is an institution that believes its leader is infallible. What mystifies
me is the continued desire to believe in it.