Canadian lawyer Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond accused the country’s Catholic Church of a lack of willingness to come to terms with its treatment of indigenous peoples. – Photo: Simon Fraser University / cc-by-2.0
Vancouver – Canadian lawyer Mary Ellen Turpel-LaFond accused the country’s Catholic Church of a lack of will in its treatment of indigenous peoples. Turpel-Lafond told the Catholic News Agency (KNA) in Vancouver on Tuesday that the truth about church-run re-education centers for Indigenous boys and girls has yet to be fully revealed.
Among other things, this is due to the fact that the willingness of some Catholic institutions to cooperate still shows great lack when it comes to the investigation of misbehavior and abuse of students. The director of the Dialogue Center for the History of So-called Residential Schools at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver explained, “Survivors of the schools were aggressively questioned, ignored and forced to engage in protracted legal disputes with church sponsors.” was done.” .
Turpel-Lafond acknowledged that some church leaders, such as Vancouver Archbishop John Michael Miller, are trying to improve relations with indigenous peoples. But the impression arises that it is often about bishops who are about to retire and are replaced by those who “continue the tradition of expressing mild regret without using all their might for the truth.” keep”.
Canada is currently shaken by the discovery of two mass graves in former Catholic reintegration centres. In late May, the remains of 215 children were found at the site of a former Catholic boarding school near the small town of Kamloops in western Canada. The sons and daughters of indigenous families were mostly forced to live in such institutions in order to introduce them to “Christian civilization” by the Canadian state.
Last week, representatives of the Cowes ethnic group announced that investigators had found the remains of people in 751 unmarked graves on the property of the former Catholic Marival Indian Residential School in the central Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
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