Should the Pope issue an apology for the treatment of children that were placed in Residential schools as well as other Catholic administered institutions ?

The catholic church has never apologized for decades of horrific rapes of young boys by priests. They will never apologize for the deaths in their custody of minority children

firstly, I’m am so sorry for what you experienced. That had to be horrific. The recent discovery at the Canadian residential school with the mass grave… I can’t even describe how I feel. I’ve lived on several continents during my life time and studied and had the opportunity to get to know several indigenous groups. The story of colonisation and missions are never a good one.

@sorry

Not to worry I have reconciled my past and understand it was the climate of that time period, much was going on economic struggles resulted in children placed in orphanages for a time.

At least it was swift for me and my sisters only five months was enough to grow up realizing pain in life but we grew from it and hopefully help others in our present life.

Pain in life is meant .I think to awaken a soul to their focus in life.

For example: I am documenting my late mother’s experience with a broken medical system that eventually learned how to properly and compassionately help mental health patients.

It was an ignorant society that people grew up in, but grew in understanding years later.

@Inspired_2write That’s one way to looking at it and I hope it helps you heal. We can only look at ways to heal ourselves when we look back on pasts we had no control over.

@sorry
Well I am a senior now and had time to reflect on my past with more compassion and understanding then what I had growing up.

@Inspired_2write Kia ora Kia kaha.

Apologies?
The continuous and widespread child abuse has always been known by “the church”, and “the church” systematically covered up those crimes, and protected the criminals by shuffling and moving them around to ‘fresh hunting grounds’. They were not even above threatening and blaming the victims for “tempting” the perpetrators into committing their crimes.
The mass graves are just another pile of corpses among “the church’s” body count.

It is time to treat the catholic church as what it is: a transnational criminal organisation and a child sex abuse ring. It needs to be dismantled in its entirety, and every single functionary prosecuted.
There will be no justice, until the pope dangles from a tree by his neck.

@ragingloli it’s not even this pope’s fault. We need to just go back and stop this pathetic ‘sainthood’ buggery. *right back to the beginning.

@sorry
The sex abuse scandal in the church has been public knowledge for decades now.
The current pope, in power since 2013, and his predecessor, had plenty of time to “clean house”, and hand over the perpetrators, their accomplices, helpers, and protectors, to the authorities.
And what have they done to that effect? Fuck all.
The rot goes all the way to the top, and the popes are as guilty as the rest of them.

I think they should, as should the Canadian and United States governments that allowed it to happen.

If you want to read a good novel that is set in an Indian school in the Midwest United States, read This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger.

@Inspired_2write I am most interested in what you think about it since you lived through the orphanage experience at the hands of the system and the Catholic Church.

I’ve mentioned to you my paternal grandfather spent time in an orphanage in Latvia because the family was so poor and could not feed all of the children. I doubt it was a Catholic orphanage, I assumed it was some sort of government run orphanage, but I don’t know. Hard for me to think about it, I assume it was quite terrifying and upsetting for him. We aren’t Catholic, I don’t know if Catholic orphanages took in children from other religions back then. I wish I had asked him. Please write down your experiences for your children and grandchildren.

Anyway, I don’t think an apology from the Pope would do much to make any troubles or aches from the experience disappear, but an acknowledgment that children went through it is good, and an apology would do that I guess. I would want to know it’s better now, that’s what would matter to me most. If an actual nun who worked at the orphanage talked about it and showed deep remorse that would mean more to me I think.

I was happy to hear a Catholic friend of mine 15 years ago said her priest specifically brought up corporal punishment and that he was against it. I don’t know if that is now the position of the Catholic Church overall.

If anyone is interested, Pierce Brosnan starred in a movie called Evelyn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_(2002_film) where his children are removed by the Irish government and sent to a Catholic orphanage. Some of the nuns are horrible and some nice. He goes to court to try to get them back. It’s based on a true story.

I wonder what the Catholic Church gained by taking in these children? Why were they influencing governments to send the children to the orphanages? Or, were they just trying to be helpful when governments were removing children or families were so poor they couldn’t take care of their children?

@ragingloli the corruption of the Vatican has been known for CENTURIES. It’s funny how some folks only count the decades.

@sorry I think most people know.

Like any bloated organization that can take its existence and revenues for granted, the Church has never had to cater to anybody. Whatever people suffered, their allegiance to the Church did not waver. Only in the recent past, there has been some rethinking.

Given all I know today, if I were a Catholic, I would have renounced it by now. We rarely inherit anything from our parents more strongly than religion. If that were not the case, Catholicism would have to compete and be forced to be better.

Note: Kia ora Kia kaha.

Translated means “Live to be Strong”.
I agree as we age we come to understand what we have lived can tear us apart or make us stronger.

@JLeslie

Not all in the Catholic Church are mean spirited of abusive only some and it is those that hide behind the Religion that blot that Religion gravely.

Those perpetrators should be ‘defrocked ” ( stripped of their ministerial credentials and removed as well as any other perpetrator employed by the institution).

I watched a documentary in 2019 where Pope Francis had done this and threw out perpetrators permanently and gave warning to the rest under his Church.

( this was in South America where a Bishop would not enforce this rule and so Pope France is defrocking that Bishop as well. ( 2019). According to his statement then.

Note: that Pope Francis was moved only by South American women who demanded retribution and also recognized women’s voice in all matters.

gotta love the ‘not all men’ or ‘not all priest’ argument. It is so totally beside…. the point.

@Inspired_2write I mostly have very positive things to say about Catholics and the Catholic Church at least during my life time.

My husband was raised Catholic, my closest and dearest friends are Catholic, and I was shocked people left Catholicism when the pedophilia scandals were in the news.

@Inspired_2write A better translation would be, ‘Be/live healthy to live strong.’ or literally it is Be well, Be strong.