‘Today is the beginning of something’: Metis leader after meeting with Pope Francis

ROME—Hard truths and deep prayer marked the Metis delegation’s hour with Pope Francis Monday, said bishops who were in the room when nine Metis elders and residential school survivors spoke with the Pope. 

“A lot of hard truths were spoken, but they were spoken in a very gracious, poignant and eloquent way,” Regina Archbishop Don Bolen told dozens of journalists gathered at a Rome hotel and listening in on a live feed.

In French, Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishops president Bishop Raymond Poisson said he witnessed a “heart to heart” exchange between the Metis delegates and Pope Francis. The exchange was filled with “mutual affection,” the bishop said.

“I will take these reflections with me in my prayer and also in my meditation,” said Archbishop Poisson, switching to English.

Recalling the stories Metis survivors told Pope Francis in the first of three planned encounters between the Pope and Indigenous delegations in Rome brought Metis historian and educator Mitchell Case to tears. 

Case spoke of how the meetings and the coverage they are generating from Canadian and global press will validate Metis identity for the next generation, including his own nieces and nephews who are beginning to learn the Michif language that was suppressed at residential schools in their grandparents’ generation.

“Today is the beginning of something,” Case said, later adding “We’re going to work to make the world better for those little kids.”

For Metis, who were excluded from the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and from the subsequent Truth and Reconciliation Commission proceedings, the meeting with Pope Francis is particularly significant, Case said.

“This is the first time any Metis survivors have been invited to say anything,” he said.

The Metis want to see reconciliation carried into the future at the level of individual Catholics and parishes.

“You can bet you will see me holding my hand out and going to the churches and asking how we can go forward together in a good way,” said interim president of the Fraser Valley Metis Association Pixie Wells.

Wells urged Canadians to plant Forget-Me-Nots in their gardens this spring, the flower also known as the Metis Rose, as a sign of reconciliation.

“Reconciliation did not begin with the meeting today with Pope Francis and it did not finish today,” said Metis National Council president Cassidy Caron.

Today’s meeting was “just one step forward in our journey,” said Caron. “We’re looking forward to whatever [Pope Francis] intends to do when he comes to visit us in Canada.”

Caron took pains to emphasize that the harm done by residential schools isn’t just a matter of history.

“We know that intergenerational trauma is embedded in our DNA,” she said. “The science has been done. We’re passing this trauma on to our children…. We need action. An apology is just words.”

Case derided what he called “the reconciliation industry.”

“All this money isn’t getting to Metis,” he said. “Our people are still living in poverty. We sell Indian tacos at the community centre to fund basic needs.”

The most important thing that can happen out of the meetings here in Rome and a subsequent visit to Canada from Pope Francis is a 180-degree turn away from the message of Catholic-run residential schools, said Caron.

“Our children came home (from Catholic-run schools, including day schools) hating who they are,” she said.

Their message today is, “We are still here… We love our culture. We love our language,” said Caron.

In addition to the Metis, Pope Francis met with Inuit Indigenous representatives and  the Canadian bishops during two hour-long encounters at the Vatican on Monday.

The meetings were part of a week-long visit of Canadian Indigenous leaders to the Vatican, first organized for 2020, and then rescheduled in the wake of outrage in 2021 over the reported discovery of unmarked graves at the site of former residential schools in Canada.

Pope Francis will also meet with a delegation from the Assembly of First Nations on Thursday, and on Friday he will address the three groups together.

Members of the Metis and Inuit peoples told journalists that an apology from Pope Francis in Canada for the abuses committed at Catholic-run residential schools would be very meaningful.

Pope Francis indicated in October last year that he would be open to making a papal visit to Canada, which he reiterated during the March 28 meetings. Although the trip has not been officially announced, Francis is expected to visit Canada this year.

According to a bishop who accompanied the Inuit delegation, the Pope joked that he would prefer not to visit northern Canada during the frigid cold of winter.

Another request that came out of the meeting with the Metis was for access to records in Catholic dioceses or religious orders related to students of the residential schools.

A bishop clarified that there may be records in the mother houses of religious orders in Rome, but not at the Vatican.

Delegation members explained the desire to reconstruct their history and the stories of Metis people who were mistreated in residential schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Some 150,000 children attended residential schools in the 100 years or so that they operated. The schools, many of them run by Catholic institutions, were a government-led program to suppress the native language and cultural practices of Indigenous peoples.

In the 1980s, former students began to reveal some of the abuses they faced in the schools, including physical, mental, and sexual abuse.

Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), said that the meeting with Francis included “a diversity of conversation.”

“The Pope was welcoming and very thoughtful and very engaged throughout the entire encounter. We were very pleased with the way in which the meeting unfolded,” he said, noting that the delegates and the Pope had conversations about faith and the Catholic Church, and the negative impact of residential schools in causing intergenerational trauma.

Obed said they also asked for the Catholic Church’s intervention in the case of Father Johannes Rivoire, a Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, accused of sexually assaulting children in Naujaat and Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, in Canada, in the 1960s and 70s, who returned to France in 1993.

Obed explained that they asked the Pope for help convincing Rivoire to face charges in Canada, or if he refuses, for intervention in having the priest extradited.

The Inuit delegation also gave Pope Francis several gifts, including two wood carvings, and a stole and rosary case made from seal skin.

The Catholic Register with Catholic News Agency files