QUEBEC—Pope Francis repeatedly denounced colonialism during his visit to Canada this week as he apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in managing residential schools for indigenous children that stripped away their own cultural practices and beliefs. Yet among the pope’s expressions of sorrow and requests for forgiveness, he included praise for some of the earliest missionaries to Canada, proposing them as models of cultural inclusivity in the church then and today.
The tension between those positions reflects the complexity of the challenge of reconciling the church and indigenous peoples in Canada and elsewhere.