The Vatican and the Right to Truth of Indigenous Peoples in Canada
The passing of Pope Francis on April 21, 2025, marked the end of 12 years of relations between the Catholic Church and First Nations communities in Canada—an era marked by unprecedented ups and, as some believe, disappointing downs. Being the first pope from the so-called “New World,” reconciliation with the Native populations of the Americas had been high on Pope Francis’s agenda since the beginning of his pontificate, calling them “a living cry of hope” and apologizing for the Catholic Church’s enormous role in the colonization of the American continent.
What ultimately created a debacle for Pope Francis, however, was the discovery of 215 unmarked graves in Canada in 2021. These graves, belonging to First Nations children, were found on the former premises of a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. This harrowing discovery was followed by the unearthing of hundreds more graves in Saskatchewan later that same year. These discoveries brought the entire nation’s attention to the horrors of residential schools, a fact that had been long established within the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities all over Canada.
First established as part of the newly formed Canadian government’s policy regarding Indigenous peoples in the Indian Act of 1876, First Nation, Inuit, and Métis children were collectively categorized as “Indians,” taken away from their families and local communities, and sent into a certain type of Church-run boarding school that came to be known as residential schools. Many would be held in these schools for years on end, experiencing poor hygiene, hunger and abuse. The reason for this relocation has been described by the Canadian National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation as “a systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples,” as well as a “cultural genocide.”
Numerous churches were complicit in the running of boarding schools, but the first residential schools in Canada were built by the Catholic church in the area of New France. By 1930, 60 per cent of all boarding schools were run by the Roman Catholic Church. After the Kamloops incident, outcry for the Pope to formally apologize rose near and far—an unprecedented request. These demands were finally resolved when Pope Francis delivered an official apology in his visit to Canada in 2023, going as far as calling what happened at residential schools a genocide.
Despite the significance of this historic gesture in addressing Vatican-First Nations relations, the battle over the Church archives regarding the residential schools continues, as the Pope’s apology did not extend to facilitating access to them. What particularly set off the alarm bell for First Nation activists, however, was the 2021 news about the destruction and relocation of Residential School archives from Canada to Rome—an action that severely undermines the efforts of the victims and researchers alike to uncover the truth about this dark past.
This has been addressed in the “right to the truth” paradigm coined by scholars of law and social justice, which posits that “Every person has the inalienable right to know the truth about past events concerning the perpetration of heinous crimes and about the circumstances and reasons that led, through massive or systematic violations, to the perpetration of those crimes.” In line with developments in the discourse of transitional justice, truth-seeking is not only seen as an act of healing wounds but also as a vessel to deliver justice. Recounting the injustice done to the victims and having their stories acknowledged publicly is, in itself, a form of restitution for the wounds inflicted by gross human rights violations. For some victims, the pursuit of truth and recognition is even more important than the punishment of the perpetrators. What’s more, the right to truth belongs not only to the survivors and immediate relatives of the deceased— it belongs to whole communities that were stricken by large-scale violations of human rights. Indeed, such is the case for Indigenous communities in Canada.
These developments led to the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2008. The TRC was mandated to investigate gross violations of human rights, foster reconciliation between the survivors and, ultimately, help the cause of the victims by enabling them to tell their story to the wider public. The TRC issued 94 “calls to action” in line with its mandate, several of which were specifically aimed at facilitating researchers’ access to relevant archives.
Nonetheless, the Catholic Church’s handling of its archives has long been a topic of debate among historians and activists alike. Historians highlight the lengthy and selective process of opening archives to researchers—an issue that was raised in a number of Senate hearings, especially regarding archives held by numerous Catholic institutions and congregations, such as the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of Saint Anne. On the other hand, as manifested in some recent investigations into cases of abuse, victims are alarmed by the wanton destruction of archives by church officials and the relocation to Rome of evidence related to past abuses on the part of the Catholic Church members; a practice not without a very similar historical precedent.
It seems this, in part, harkens to a divergence of viewpoints between the stakeholders. A number of these points of disagreement are clearly visible in the 2023 guidelines published by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, one of the most authoritative Catholic institutions in Canada. These guidelines, which draw heavily on the Code of Canon Law, place great emphasis on the right to privacy and the reputations of the people to whom the information pertains—a policy that is indeed hard to balance with the truth-seeking efforts of Indigenous activists to have the names of the perpetrators announced. This issue has notably manifested in 21-year non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that researchers from the Office of the Treaty Commissioner of Saskatchewan had to sign to access archives at St. Paul University in Ottawa. Moreover, these guidelines state individuals do not “have a right to others’ documents even if they are close relatives,” a statement clearly at odds with the community-based and collective nature of the right to truth.
However, one should not forget there is light at the end of the tunnel. The Oblates, for example, recently signed a collaboration agreement with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), the successor to the TRC, NCTR (TRC’s successor), strengthening their collaboration on Residential School archives, while retracting the 50-year posthumous confidentiality they had placed on the personal archives of their members. In light of all considerations, Pope Francis indeed left a revolutionary example within an institution often regarded as inherently conservative.
It is now up to Pope Leo XIV, the first North American Pontiff, who is of Creole descent himself, to complete the task of reconciling with the First Nation, Inuit, and Métis peoples of Canada. This can only be done through allowing the truth to come to light, and for this, something more than an apology meant to make them forget is needed. It seems, after all, that sometimes old acquaintances aren’t overcome simply by being forgotten, or never brought to mind. Rather, they are properly mended when they are recounted, acknowledged, and meaningfully attended to.
Edited by Olivia Diamantopoulos
Featured Image: Shoes placed on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery serve as a tribute to the children whose remains were discovered in Kamloops. Over time, shoes have come to represent the missing Indigenous children. “Kamloops Residential School Memorial, May 30th 2021” by GoToVan is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
