Pope wasn’t perfect but showed us another path

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/04/2025 (215 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I have seldom been more conflicted than when Pope Francis wore a headdress.

Wilton Littlechild, a former commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, gave the pontiff the headdress after he delivered an apology in 2022 for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system.

I felt confused and triggered, and thought about this for a long time. I said in numerous interviews at the time that I wasn’t a fan of using sacred objects for political purposes.

However, I have never forgotten the sight of the leader of the Catholic Church showing the world that an expression of Indigenous spirituality is as important, valuable and beautiful as anything else he wears on his head.

Pope Francis, who died Monday after acting as head of the world’s largest church for 12 years, was a listener. He heard the call of Indigenous leaders and peoples, and Canadians, including Catholics, to come to Canada and apologize.

The Catholic Church operated the vast majority of residential schools in Canada and continues to have a massive footprint in most Indigenous communities. That is something the TRC commissioners heard nearly every day during their six years of hearings, meetings and research projects.

For years, the church held that everything in Indigenous cultures — from language to hair to headdresses — had to be eradicated, with residential schools being the primary method to “civilize the Indian.”

The TRC called for a papal apology. After some pressure on the church, the apology visit happened.

Pope Francis first invited Indigenous leaders to the Vatican, the base of an institution that demonized Indigenous traditions. There, Indigenous peoples wore traditional clothing, spoke ancestral languages and performed ceremonies — a remarkable sight.

Then, the Pope visited a former residential school site in Maskwacis, Alta., in July 2022.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities co-operated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools.”

Describing a “deplorable evil” where “the authentic identity of your peoples was eroded,” Pope Francis then begged “forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.”

Some thought these words didn’t go far enough, which is fine.

However, from the moment Pope Francis allowed Littlechild to put the headdress on his head, the pontiff’s visit wasn’t only about an apology. It was a demonstration of how Catholics can and should reject racism, division and indifference, and act differently.

As the Pope pointed out while delivering vespers in Québec City a few days later, Christians trying to convert Indigenous peoples were misguided.

As he said, Catholics must “build relationships of fraternity with everyone, with Indigenous brothers and sisters, with every sister and brother we meet, because the presence of God is reflected in each of their faces.”

In other words, Indigenous peoples — while practicing traditional cultures, languages and spiritualities — already know God and don’t need Christians and missionaries to convince or force them into anything.

Pope Francis, however, didn’t stop there.

After Québec City, he travelled to Galilee, as he called it (Iqaluit).

Travelling from the centre of Catholicism in Canada to a place where Indigenous peoples have woven together traditional and Christian cultures, he then stated to reporters on the plane home that Canada’s residential school system was an example of cultural genocide. Three months later, the House of Commons voted unanimously to recognize the system as cultural genocide.

A few months later, Pope Francis repudiated the Catholic Church’s historical Doctrine of Discovery, something Indigenous leaders had also called upon him to do.

None of these actions returned the stolen lands Catholic churches and institutions reside upon, fulfilled the promises Canadian Catholic leaders have made to residential school survivors, or helped find the thousands of children who went to Catholic-run institutions and never came home.

However, Pope Francis showed Catholics a path from violence, genocide and indifference into a place where kindness, inclusivity and love can lead the way.

Pope Francis wasn’t perfect. He was the leader of the Catholic Church. But, in the end, he was very, very human.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca