Indigenous leaders reflect on late Pope Francis's visit to Quebec City

It was an enactment betwixt the precocious Pope Francis and an aged residential schoolhouse subsister that struck Mandy Gull-Masty the astir erstwhile she met the pontiff during his sojourn to Quebec City 3 years ago. 

Gull-Masty, the erstwhile Grand Chief of the Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee, watched arsenic the elder shared her communicative of being ripped distant from her household astatine property three, the pope listening attentively.

"She went into that abstraction and she had specified a tone of openness and forgiveness and she was capable to beryllium portion of a discussion," said Gull-Masty. "I deliberation it truly meant a batch to her."

At the time, Gull-Masty was helping co-ordinate the elders who would travel face-to-face with the Pope successful Quebec City arsenic helium visited Canada to apologize to Indigenous people for the Catholic Church's relation successful residential schools.

Gull-Masty, who was portion of a delegation that received an assemblage with Pope Francis successful Rome earlier that year, was 1 of the archetypal to perceive his apology — an apology that was denied by his predecessor, Benedict XVI, erstwhile erstwhile nationalist main of the Assembly of First Nations Phil Fontaine made the aforesaid travel successful 2009.

Gull-Masty says she respected Pope Francis's leadership in 2022.

"There were immoderate radical who felt that, you know, this apology did not mean thing to them. There were immoderate that felt that this allowed for them to person healing," she said.

"All of those reactions are the close reactions due to the fact that it is an idiosyncratic acquisition and successful leadership, you're determination to enactment everybody."

The Grand Chief of the Huron-Wendat Nation successful the Quebec City area, Pierre Picard, said the sojourn by Pope Francis helped kickstart a existent process of reconciliation with the Catholic Church.

Members of his federation marched from the erstwhile tract of the Pointe-Bleue residential schoolhouse successful the Saguenay portion to Quebec City, implicit the people of a week, to perceive the Pope.

"Others would similar that the instauration itself apologize. But I deliberation that wrong the spectrum of the healing process, Pope Francis has decidedly established himself arsenic a builder of this relationship," said Picard.

He said there's still enactment to beryllium done, arsenic he'd like to have, for example, easier entree to the archives kept by the Church — thing echoed by the Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak.

She was besides portion of the delegation that went to the Vatican successful the outpouring of 2022.

"They inactive person our artifacts. We person to bring our artifacts backmost location to Canada and they have, you know, immoderate of our ceremonial items," she told CBC's The National. "I deliberation that's 1 measurement that the Pope had committed to us."

She said she'd been moving with the Pope's bureau connected that contented and hopes that enactment doesn't extremity with his passing.

"We mislaid an state today."

Picard says a batch of Canadian and Quebec governmental institutions and leaders should learn from Pope Francis successful their attack to relations with Indigenous people.

In a connection posted to its website, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops' president, Rev. William T. McGrattan, said Pope Francis's 2022 papal sojourn reflected "the Church's committedness to proceed walking unneurotic connected the way of truth, justice, healing, reconciliation, and hope."

Gull-Masty says the precocious Pope Francis did his part. 

"He asked for the [conference] to guarantee that they travel up," she said. "And present the shot is truly successful their court."