We, the Massachusetts Catholics for Indigenous Rights and Call To Action acknowledge we live on the traditional lands of many Indigenous Peoples across North America, also recognized as Turtle Island. 

The Papal visit to Canada July 24th, 2022 is occurring seven years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has published its 94 Calls to Action including (no. 58) calling for an apology from the Pope delivered in Canada. We offer the following, mindful that we as Roman Catholics can not be silent because silence is collusion in the unaddressed harms done by our church.  

In the April meeting with Indigenous leaders at the Vatican, Pope Francis heard elders’ stories of trauma. With the Indigenous delegates one evening, the Pontiff prayed with a cradle board representing the children who never made it back to their families.

We uphold the truth and the ongoing impacts of the harms done by the church to victims, intergenerational survivors and their communities, to the earth, and to the Church itself by its institutional conduct in participating in residential schools everywhere. 

It has done this through the systemic phenomenon of denying whole classes of people their dignity through the pronouncements known as Papal Bulls which have been accorded the legitimacy of international law since the 15th century. Those pronouncements have been incorporated into the US and other Euro-based legal systems as the Doctrine of Discovery, more accurately labeled by Indigenous legal authorities as the Doctrine of Domination. 

We call on the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) and the CCCB (Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops) to join with the Pope in taking responsibility for their institutional conduct that we believe has promoted, if not created, the current global racist policies of subjugation and genocide. To that end we call for Pope Francis, the USCCB, and the CCCB to state that the church itself, not just some of its agents, has erred in its participation in the residential schools the world over.

We urgently request that Pope Francis demand the USCCB and the CCCB, in the same statement and in subsequent actions, grant immediate and full access to the following:

A - To all records of residential schools and all related matters wherever they are, including covering all expenses of accessing them;

B - To the grounds of all residential schools as well as the equipment to do radar and other relevant scans/searches and procedures to locate and identify all burial sites. To immediately provide, in close consultation and following the guidance of the Indigenous communities where the schools are located and from which the children came, rematriation (as opposed to repatriation) of the remains of the children to their communities or other appropriate actions as determined by the relevant Indigenous communities;

C - To provide immediate and full access to, as well as return of all Indigenous human remains, artifacts, objects, materials in their possession or control and all records pertaining to them, including covering the costs of identifying and rematriating these items, all to be done in the presence and with full participation of the appropriate Indigenous people and communities.

D - In addition, to begin immediately to schedule meetings to collaborate with the leaders of the relevant Indigenous communities to systematically and  comprehensively create an action plan for addressing each of the 94 Calls to  Action resulting from the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Process.

We recognize that healing for the intergenerational survivors of the impacts of residential schools is a road we must make together in solidarity with all those who have suffered and continue to suffer harms at the hands of the Church. The Church must repudiate and dismantle all impacts of the Doctrine of Discovery, beginning with a direct acknowledgement of the necessity for it to take the above actions.

Our prayers and actions unite us as the church convenes for the papal visit to Canada coinciding with St. Anne’s day, commemorating the grandmother of Jesus. We call on church leaders of the United States and Canada to walk together this road for healing the generational impacts of residential schools. In solidarity with all residential school survivors, their families, their communities, and allies--signatories below:

Massachusetts Catholics for Indigenous Rights and Call To Action

20 July 2022

This petition was written by Massachusetts Catholics for Indigenous Rights. 

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