First Nation’s protestors unfurl banner at Pope’s mass

Thursday’s protest by a group of indigenous people who unfurled a banner during the pope’s mass at the Church of Saint Anne de Beaupré in Quebec, asking him to distance himself from the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery”, expressed the opinion of some of the representatives of the native peoples who wanted something more regarding Francisco’s apology.

The representatives of the original peoples – First Nations, Métis and Inuit – expressed their satisfaction and their emotion when the pope asked them in Maskwacis, in Edmonton, “humbly” forgiveness for the responsibilities of the Church in those boarding schools created for the “processes of assimilation” and in which nearly 150,000 indigenous children suffered all kinds of sexual and physical abuse,  and thousands of them died of mistreatment and disease.

But many of them agreed that the request for forgiveness was a starting point and not an endpoint in the process of reconciliation with the Church and that much remained to be done regarding the requests of the original peoples.