Several members of the indigenous communities stressed that they had remained unsatisfied in the face of the pope’s apology during his tour of Quebec, an opinion shared by the former chief of the Abitibiwinni First Nation, who does not want to hear anything from the pope.
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“At least if he could beat around the bush [during his excuses], it would still be interesting […], but he’s not even close to the pot ‘sacrament'”, testified Richard Kistabish in an interview Thursday morning at QUB radio.
According to him, the apologies are only half made if they are only in the personal name of the sovereign pontiff and not in the name of the Church.
“They abused the children, they killed the children, they buried the children somewhere and then ‘oops, I’m sorry, I was wrong’, that sounds very innocuous as an apology,” he said.
The one who is now part of a UNESCO group on language revitalization mentioned that he had not listened to the apology on television and that he “does not want to know anything” from the pope.
“It’s a completely futile exercise,” he explained, pointing out that the words “apology” and “pardon” do not exist in his language.
The priority remains to help find the children who have been buried.
“It makes us realize how far healing is from being started, because we learn to live with that, we don’t heal from that,” said the man who was a resident for 10 years.
