{"id":26638,"date":"2022-07-25T14:19:18","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T18:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianz.com\/News\/?p=26638"},"modified":"2022-07-25T14:19:19","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T18:19:19","slug":"the-conversation-a-brief-history-of-the-catholic-church-and-native-peoples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2022\/07\/25\/the-conversation-a-brief-history-of-the-catholic-church-and-native-peoples\/","title":{"rendered":"The Conversation: A brief history of the Catholic Church and Native peoples"},"content":{"rendered":"\"St.<\/a>
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican, commonly known as St. Peter’s, is seen in a drawing from around 1640. Image: The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA<\/a>)<\/figcaption>\r\n
The Vatican and Western Canadian missions<\/div>\r\n
A brief history<\/div>\r\n
Monday, July 25, 2022<\/div>\r\n
By Roberto Perin<\/a> (York University, Canada<\/a>)\r\n<\/div>\r\n
The Conversation<\/div>\r\n
theconversation.com<\/A><\/div>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nPope Francis\u2019s historic visit to Canada<\/a> and his much-anticipated apology for the Catholic Church\u2019s role in abuses<\/a> Indigenous people suffered at residential schools raises the question of the overall relationship between the Vatican and Indigenous Peoples.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nIn my book Rome in Canada: the Vatican and Canadian Affairs in the Late Victorian Age<\/em>, I examined how lobbies based on divergent interests in government, church representatives in Canada and the Vatican itself operated in an age of expanding colonial powers and Catholic evangelism.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nToday, the Catholic Church is still popularly seen as a tightly centralized organization under absolute papal authority. In fact, it is one where competing interests<\/a> often vie for influence and power<\/a>.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nFor example, in the three decades after Confederation in Canada (1867), \u201can aggressive Anglo-Saxon nationalism struggled to imprint its cultural model on the emerging Canadian state<\/a>.\u201d \r\nThe biggest source of tension in the church in Canada was that between French and English speakers.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nConflicts erupted about the linguistic suitability candidates for episcopal office, the creation of new dioceses, the appointment of pastors in ethnically mixed parishes and the language of instruction in Catholic schools.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nIn these struggles, people in the pews challenged religious authorities, priests and bishops fought each other and religious communities split along linguistic lines. The Vatican had to intervene in some of these problems, but the Roman bureaucracy itself was split in competing factions over the correct course of action.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nMy research of 19th-century missions and Vatican diplomacy leads me to conclude \r\nthat, despite the complexities of structure and authority within the Catholic Church, the Vatican was certainly uninvolved in, and likely unaware of, agreements signed between the government of Canada and religious orders to run residential schools.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nWhile the federal government must bear ultimate responsibility for creating and funding residential schools, religious communities, bishops and popes were variously complicit in a system that dispossessed Indigenous peoples and cruelly oppressed their children.

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Church justified dispossession<\/div>\r\n\r\nAt the dawn of the 16th century, a Spanish pope, Alexander VI, created a bull (edict) Inter caetera<\/a> that paved the way for the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. This divided the New World between Spain and Portugal, the two most powerful maritime states at the time. Not a thought was given to the hemisphere\u2019s Indigenous inhabitants.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nThe bull validated the subsequent rampant exploitation of European expansionism, and is one bull often associated with the \u201cDoctrine of Discovery.<\/a>\u201d

<\/P>\r\n\r\nIt is fitting therefore that an Argentine pope<\/a>, Pope Francis, repudiate his predecessor\u2019s document.

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19th century \u2018propagation of the faith\u2019<\/div>\r\n\r\nAs a mission territory, the lands that became Canada fell under the jurisdiction of a Vatican department, Propaganda Fide (Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith)<\/a>. This was established in 1622 and headed by a cardinal with the help of clerical bureaucrats.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nAs a result of major administrative reforms instituted in 1908, dioceses with significant Indigenous populations such as Mackenzie-Fort Smith (in present-day Yellowknife) or Hearst-Moosonee (in northern Ontario) continued to be under its rule, whereas the non-Indigenous ones were detached from it.

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Early evangelizing<\/div>\r\n\r\nThe actual task of evangelizing was undertaken by religious communities, like the Jesuits<\/a>, who were were responsible not to Propaganda Fide, but to their own superiors often resident in Rome. After the British Conquest of 1763,<\/a> male religious orders were all but eliminated and it was not until the 1840s under Ignace Bourget<\/a>, the bishop of Montr\u00e9al, that they returned.

<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, in 1820, Rome appointed a French Canadian resident bishop in Red River (present-day Winnipeg). Bishop Norbert Provencher was also responsible for missions in Western Canada. The Anglican Church dispatched its own workers there and were soon joined by other Protestant denominations<\/a>.

<\/P>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nShort-staffed, Provencher went to Europe where he met Eug\u00e8ne de Mazenod, bishop of Marseilles and founder of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate who played a key role in the West. Alexandre-Antonin Tach\u00e9, a Qu\u00e9bec Oblate, became Provencher\u2019s successor in 1853.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nTach\u00e9 ensured the French and Belgian Oblates would monopolize the nomination of of bishops<\/a> for the rest of the century west and north of the Red River. Since female religious communities were recruited in Qu\u00e9bec to staff schools and hospitals serving Indigenous communities, the Catholic Church had a decidedly French-speaking character.

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