It was genocide, plain and simple.

When busloads of residential school survivors, elders, knowledge keepers and youth descend on Edmonton and Quebec City to be present as Pope Francis walks on his “penitential pilgrimage,” Cynthia Bunn will be among them. But she didn’t want to be.

Asking for prayers ahead of his visit to Canada July 24-29, Pope Francis described the trip as a "penitential pilgrimage" as part of a commitment to healing and reconciliation with the country's Indigenous people.

If Pope Francis is going to broaden or deepen the apology he offered April 1 in Rome, then it’s going to happen at Maskwacis, 70 kilometres south of Edmonton, site of one of the largest Indian residential schools in Canada.

Publicity about the residential schools has focused on the presence of graves on the grounds of or near those schools. Questions are raised about whether the objects identified by ground-penetrating radar actually represent bodies. If we suppose these are indeed graves, what can we conclude regarding what happened in residential schools? 

A life that very easily could have fallen off the rails after a painful experience in Canada’s residential school system was not to be for Bill Adsit.

Like millions of Canadians who came to see their history in a new light, Canada’s Catholic bishops were galvanized and spurred to action by the discovery of graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School one year ago.

Hundreds of boarding schools supported by the U.S. government for 150 years sought to forcefully assimilate Native American and Indigenous children into white society, a first-of-its-kind report from the Interior Department said.

As three separate Indigenous delegations head to Rome for meetings with Pope Francis on March 28, March 31 and April 1, Canada’s Oblate Fathers have announced a deal with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to make more residential school records available, including material that may be archived in Rome and Paris.

Toronto, Hamilton pledge to pay one-third of healing fund

When ground-penetrating radar revealed 54 possible gravesites near the former St. Phillip’s and Fort Pelly residential schools, the Archdiocese of Regina and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate had already reached out to the Keeseekoose First Nation to make records available and offer assistance in the search.

Be careful with words spoken in a hyper-sensitive age

Bringing together a trove of newly available documents, the most complete record of how Catholic residential school operators ultimately ended their obligations under the historic 2006 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement is now online.

Catholic Register columnist Glen Argan failed. To his credit he admitted it. After writing a gravely inaccurate column on the residential schools issue, he corrected the facts in his next one.

VANCOUVER -- Rousing applause sounded as Cree elder Don Tourangeau embraced Fr. Pierre Ducharme at St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Richmond, B.C., on Canada’s first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.