Pope brings apology to Arctic Indigenous people

By Carol Woodward
Catholic News Service

IQALUIT, Nunavut (CNS) – On a stage designed to evoke a qammaq – a traditional Inuit summer home built of whale ribs, sod and stone – Pope Francis again apologized to the Indigenous communities of Canada for Catholics’ complicity in breaking up their families and suppressing their languages.

“I want to tell you how very sorry I am and to ask for forgiveness for the evil perpetrated by not a few Catholics”who ran the residential schools Indigenous children were forced to attend, Pope Francis said in the Canadian Arctic.

The stories told by survivors “not only cause us pain; they also create scandal,” the pope said July 29 in Iqaluit, Nunavut’s capital city.

After a flight from Quebec of just over three hours, Pope Francis was met at the Iqaluit airport by provincial and city officials, leaders of local Inuit organizations and Andre Tautu and Salome Kangok, two survivors of residential schools.

Pope Francis held a private meeting with more survivors of the town of 7,429 at Nakasuk Elementary School gym. Designed to evoke the warmth of an igloo, the pope witnessed the lighting of the qulliq – a seal-oil lamp.

Outside the school, the townspeople, Canadian church representatives and visitors gathered for a public event highlighting Inuit culture, particularly dancing and throat singing.

Holly Uvilluk and three other social workers she works with came with their families.

“It’s exciting,” she said, “but I almost cried when I was parking my car. I was thinking of my dad. He’s 73 and grew up in Igloolik and went to residential school.”

Many of the women were wearing amauti – a traditional fringed poncho with a pouch on the back for carrying a baby.

Addressing the gathering, Pope Francis said that listening to the survivors “renewed in me the indignation and shame that I have felt for months,” ever since survivors traveled to the Vatican in March and April to share their stories and request that Pope Francis visit Canada to apologize on their land.

An elder visiting the Vatican in March described traditional Indigenous families – households of grandparents, parents and children – to Pope Francis as being like “springtime, when young birds chirp happily around their mother. But suddenly, he said, the singing stopped: Families were broken up, and the little ones were taken away far from home. Winter fell over everything.”

Iqaluit is on the border of the Arctic and subarctic polar climate zones, and ice and snow usually cover the ground from October through June.

“How evil it is to break the bonds uniting parents and children, to damage our closest relationships, to harm and scandalize the little ones,” the pope told the crowd in the Inuktitut language that was suppressed in the residential schools.