Canadian News

“Education got us into this; education will get us out of this.” Though those words were first spoken and repeated often by Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair Sen. Murray Sinclair, they’ve become the personal motto of St. Mary’s University Elder in Residence Casey Eagle Speaker.

At the start of the pandemic, retired surgeon Dr. Frank Browne got up at 5 a.m. ready to head into the hospital to tend to the sick. He had heard the call to retired doctors to assist as COVID-19 was taking its toll on the health-care system.

In the wake of the Cowessess discovery of up to 751 unmarked graves, Western Canada’s Oblate missionary order is embracing a new level of transparency, making more documents about daily operations at the order’s 48 residential schools across Canada available.

OTTAWA -- There is no guarantee that a delegation to the Vatican will lead to a papal apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential school system but the Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations is praying it will.

For educator Vanessa Pinto, the discovery of unmarked graves outside of residential schools has only strengthened her resolve to raise awareness of Indigenous history, culture and perspectives in the classroom.

STE.-ANNE-DE-BEAUPRÉ, Que. -- At the annual First Nations Sunday Mass, Cardinal Gérald Lacroix acknowledged that the revelations and realizations surrounding unmarked graves at former residential schools run by Catholic communities “have brought to light a very dark page in the history of our country. Decisions and behaviours, both by the government and the churches,” have contributed to the suffering “of our brothers and sisters.”

The Cowessess First Nation will put a name to each of the hundreds of bodies found at the unmarked graves on the former Marieval Indian Residential School, vows Chief Cadmus Delorme.

“For better or worse, the gravesite findings are bringing us face-to-face with the brutal side of the residential schools,” Regina Archbishop Don Bolen told The Catholic Register the day after headlines screamed 751 more unmarked graves found at the Cowessess First Nation, less than two hours’ drive east of Holy Rosary Cathedral in southern Saskatchewan.

OTTAWA -- Support across party lines for a bill that bans conversion therapy for youth in Canada is being labeled a “brazen assault on religious freedom” by some of the most vocal critics of the federal Liberal minority government’s political agenda.

Canadian delegations of First Nations, Métis and Inuit people will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican Dec. 17-20.