If Catholics really are going to raise $30 million to fund Indigenous-led reconciliation projects across the country, they’re going to have to run a very different campaign than the $25-million “best efforts” campaign that raised just $3.7 million between 2008 and 2014, say Catholic philanthropists and fundraisers.

The Catholic bishops of Canada have made a “financial pledge” with a “target of $30 million” over five years “as a tangible expression of their commitment to walk with the Indigenous Peoples of this land.” Local parishes will be “encouraged” to take up special collections “to support healing and reconciliation initiatives for residential school survivors, their families and their communities.”

For Canada’s Catholics, the first ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is “a day of penance and a day of hope,” Cardinal Thomas Collins said in a prayer service at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto.

As apologies go, the one issued by Canada’s Catholic bishops to Indigenous peoples marks a significant step in this long, long reconciliation journey.

Graydon Nicholas accepts the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ apology for more than a century of wrongs by Canadian Catholics in residential schools and hopes it will lead to a papal apology on Canadian soil.

OTTAWA -- Canada’s Catholic bishops have “unequivocally” apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system and have raised the possibility of a visit by the Pope to Canada as part of the “healing journey” between Canada’s Indigenous peoples and the Church.

OTTAWA -- A day set aside to remember how Canada’s Indigenous communities suffered under this country’s residential school system will take on added meaning this year when the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Sept. 30 becomes a federal statutory holiday for the first time.

The first official National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is Sept. 30, “an opportunity for each public servant to recognize and commemorate the legacy of residential schools,” the government says.

OTTAWA -- Canada’s bishops remain hopeful that a planned meeting in the Vatican with Indigenous leaders and the Pope will lead to further reconciliation despite the leader of the largest Indigenous organization in Canada saying she will not go to the Vatican.

As students filter back onto campus, one small group of first-year students at the University of St. Michael’s College will be thrust into one of the most difficult, uncomfortable and important problems this nation faces.

Whether or not reconciliation with Indigenous people lies in the future, such a reconciliation is impossible without an unclouded view of our past, from first contact to the present, Indigenous and Jesuit scholars have told The Catholic Register.

I have been listening to people within my (Catholic) faith community wrestle in a deeper way with Truth and Reconciliation this summer. The reckoning has been too long coming. Saskatchewan columnist Doug Cuthandrecently wrote that Canadians may be waking up to face our collective residential school history.  I hope he’s right. And I hope that the same will be said of the Catholic Church in this season.

OTTAWA -- Canada’s bishops remain hopeful that a planned meeting in the Vatican with Indigenous leaders and the Pope will lead to further reconciliation despite the leader of the largest Indigenous organization in Canada saying she will not go to the Vatican.

OTTAWA -- An online resource that faith organizations hope will help Canadians sort through issues for the Sept. 20 federal election has focused the often-tumultuous relationship between Canada and its Indigenous communities.

VANCOUVER -- Hopes are high for a generous response to the B.C. Bishops’ Campaign in Support of Healing and Reconciliation this month.