CREEDE HINSHAW: Humble Pope Francis asks tribes for forgiveness on behalf of church

Pope Francis came to Canada this week bearing two pair of red children’s moccasins. Solemnly returning them to two women from Canada’s First Peoples’ tribes, this ritual action was one of the many moving gestures of his weeklong self-described “pilgrimage” to express his shame, indignation and sorrow over his church’s cooperative role in the government-forced separation of indigenous children from their parents to be stripped of their native culture and assimilated into the predominant white culture. The moccasins represented the 4,100 children who died in those schools and thousands of others who disappeared.

I watched the impressive ceremony on livestream. Indigenous people were arrayed in beautiful native dress, the beads, feathers, amulets and other items holding significance beyond my understanding. Indigenous people slowly wove through the gathering bearing a lengthy red banner on which were emblazoned the name of each child who died at one of these government schools run by the church.

Pope Francis, speaking in Spanish and translated into English, spoke for 30 minutes, half a dozen times expressing sorrow for the scars and open wounds of the church’s complicity in the robbery of the native culture. Grieving he said, “I humbly, unambiguously beg forgiveness.”

He also sorrowfully mentioned the church’s “lengthy indifference” to the cultural destruction of these native people. How sad. How true. How sobering and worthy of consideration for every church which blindly refuses to address societal sin destroying our nation.

Near the service’s conclusion, representatives of the native peoples put a ceremonial headdress on the pontiff’s head, and a woman from the Cree tribe sang in her native language what was described as an “honor song,” giving the congregation an opportunity to hear and receive Pope Francis’ pleas for forgiveness.

Memory, complicity and pain must be faced.

In its own halting fashion, the church is trying to move toward justice, restoration and atonement, and for that it is to be commended. I suspect the service — and the entire process the church has entered — has its critics. The same people who want Americans to ignore our racial sin have soulmates in Canada and around the world. These critics will condemn the pontiff for this plea for reconciliation and restoration.

Acts of reconciliation demand to be expressed and confronted — when possible — in person, and every effort to do so must be made. Forgiveness via text message, email, phone call or facetime is a non-starter.

It cannot be pooh-poohed that this frail, 79-year-old pope undertook an arduous international trip to Canada, the vicar of Christ meeting these Canadian people in their native land and acknowledging their grief. It is not for nothing that these native people agreed to receive him and did so graciously. It is not for nothing that the pontiff, praying in his wheelchair, sat in a cemetery surrounded by the tombstones of those innocent indigenous children who died far from their parents.

How many times, in how many places, can and must the church humble itself? In as many places as it has fallen short of the glory of God. “Father, forgive …”