Calls to Action 59 and 60 in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada implore Church leaders to collaborate with Indigenous spiritual leaders on curriculum to open the eyes of congregations, theology students and seminarians about the Church role in the legacy of residential schools and the necessity of a Church apology.

Catholics are being called to consider how they can achieve reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples and build off the six historic days in July where the Pope visited Canada.

Mere memory is not enough for the year we have just lived. Misty-eyed nostalgia would be a sin. It would fall far short of the mark.

It has been more than four months since the end of Pope Francis’ visit to Canada to meet with Indigenous people and apologize for the Catholic Church’s involvement and acts of terror in the Indian residential school system. It’s long enough for the next steps in the journey of reconciliation to have been at least discussed. Yet, there has been next to nothing.

Celebrating Orange Shirt Day in one of Canada’s most splendid cathedrals on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation must be done with contrition and commitment to truth, Toronto Archbishop Cardinal Thomas Collins told an early morning crowd at St. Michael’s Cathedral Basilica Sept. 30.

At their first in-person meetings in three years, Canada’s bishops spoke about concrete steps toward reconciliation with Indigenous Canadians — concrete steps that include an $18.6 million bill for Pope Francis’ apostolic visit in July, continued efforts to raise $30 million over the next five years, easier access for residential school survivors and their families to diocesan archives across the country and forging personal relationships between bishops and Indigenous leaders.

The letter issued by Cardinal Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, announcing the first annual collection for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

“We want to walk together, to pray together and to work together so that the sufferings of the past can lead to a future of justice, healing and reconciliation,” said Pope Francis during his penitential pilgrimage to Canada this past summer.

A date for a new papal statement on the Doctrine of Discovery, promised by Pope Francis on his way home from Canada to Rome, has not been announced. But whenever it happens it will address core concerns of Indigenous people in Canada and in many other parts of the world.

On Sept. 17, a virtual event will launch a new Canada-wide chapter of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice (CAPP) Foundation, established in 1993 by St. John Paul II.

Canada’s bishops want to engage with a new National Council for Reconciliation that Ottawa lawmakers plan to set up this fall.

Whatever else the Holy Father’s summer visit to Canada produced, hard data show he created fertile ground on which the process of Indigenous-non Indigenous reconciliation can ably proceed.

Pope Francis has fulfilled his mission in Canada. He has apologized in Canada “to survivors, their families and communities for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit and Metis children in Catholic-run residential schools.” That was Call to Action 58 in the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Pope did not come here within one year of the report’s release, as the call to action specifies, but he did get here, apologized sincerely several times and met with groups of survivors from the schools.

The Pope’s visit to Canada and apology to Indigenous peoples was a profound occasion for our country. His visit also raises important questions about the proper relationship between political and religious institutions. 

Standing out from the final day of Pope Francis’ penitential pilgrimage to foster reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples was his remarks to Inuit youth in Iqaluit.