PENANCE AND PENITENTIAL
The beginning of a very real process of forgiveness and reconciliation
Penance and penitential are often seen as old fashioned and heavy words by Christians today. Even in the Roman Catholic Church, where we might think of the terms having a long-standing place, it is often replaced with other words that carry less of a foreboding presence.
Reconciliation, Forgiveness, Restoration are more favoured but perhaps only because they have been misunderstood as placing less responsibility on the sinner and demanding less of them.
In this article I am going to look at a particular way in which the idea of being penitential can be the beginning of a very real process of forgiveness and reconciliation. The settings in which it has particular resonance are ones of institutional sin and failure, such as the horrendous acts of child abuse in the Church that have gone mostly unpunished and have been covered up by people in positions of power – and for which there has been little or no adequate act of reparation.
And I am going to approach this subject through the lens of what happened in Canada last year, with Pope Francis making what he called his ‘Penitential Pilgrimage’ to acknowledge the terrible sin the Roman Catholic Church perpetrated against Indigenous peoples in Canada. I’m using this illustration both because it is possible to see penitence in action through it, and also because it is perhaps easier to look at such systemic sin at a little distance.
Going back in history
The sin that I am talking about is that of the Indian Residential Schools that operated all across Canada from 1863 to 1998. For much of this period, 1890 to 1969, the Roman Catholic Church ran around 60% of the schools. (The Church of England was also culpable for a smaller number of institutions.)1
In 1969 the federal government took over operations until most of the schools had closed in 1978. During the years of operation, children were taken from their families, often forcibly, and stripped of their Indigenous identity and heritage; many stayed at the schools without being able to visit their families for years. Physical and sexual abuse were perpetrated against them, and they were so neglected that many died while at the schools. Those who survived did not always find their way home, some who did return found that their parents had died while they were away.
The abuse and its legacy has led to inter-generational trauma among Indigenous nations and is directly traceable as a cause in current levels of crime, poverty and unemployment among Indigenous people.2 After many years of campaigning by Indigenous people, it was the discovery of unmarked graves on the sites of the schools that led to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in 2006 and the implementation of the settlement began in 2007, with what the Canadian Government describes as ‘the aim of bringing a fair and lasting resolution to the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools’ on its website.3 This settlement was a legal agreement between Residential School survivors, The Assembly of First Nations, Inuit representatives and those who had operated the schools, the latter being the Government and the Churches.4 Out of this, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was born.
The Commission travelled the country to listen to the stories of survivors and in 2015 it completed its report, its findings were transferred to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and it presented its 94 recommendations. The Commission was to educate the whole Canadian population of both the historical facts and the ongoing issues affecting the lives of Indigenous people in the country. Those who had been institutionally responsible for the abuse were to pay compensation and to work to redress the wrongs done. The failure of the Roman Catholic Church to pay its financial reparations became a scandal that is now being set right, and the fact that it has not taken action against perpetrators who are still alive is still a cause of anger and re-abuse of victims.
In April 2022 a delegation of Indigenous people visited the Vatican to speak to Pope Francis and to request that he visit Canada and apologize publicly for the abuse and its ongoing consequences. In July of the same year, in spite of his ill health and mobility problems, Pope Francis travelled to Canada and met officially with Indigenous people and issued his apology in person at numerous, public events in Alberta, Quebec and Nunavut.
His penitential pilgrimage took him to various sites, including the burial site for Indigenous children at the former Ermineskin Indian Residential School, and at each site he took the opportunity to perform an act of penitence that was carried out with a sincerity and gravity that could be witnessed around the world via the Salt and Light Media streaming on YouTube.5
Symbols of healing
At the site of Lac Ste Anne, an ancient sacred site of pilgrimage, Pope Francis gifted a statue that he commissioned a Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz to make of Mary Untier of Knots. This is a physical representation he identified with his task in this visit, to begin together to untie the knots that bound people, and in dedicating this to the Indigenous Peoples at Lac Ste Anne, he hoped to symbolize the beginning of a process of healing.
There were other key moments when Pope Francis was taken in his wheelchair to significant places to reflect and pray, most notably the burial site at Ermineskin and the lakeside at Lac Ste Anne that was a place sacred to Indigenous people long before the Church arrived in Canada. His lone figure was captured in photographs and used as an opportunity to demonstrate the penitential nature of his visit.
Pope Francis blesses a banner with the names of schoolchildren who died in Edmonton, Canada.
Photo Credit: Independent Photo Agency Srl/Alamy Stock Photo
In these moments he personally committed himself, and therefore the Roman Catholic Church, in full public view to the process of reconciliation. He kissed a banner with the names of all the Indigenous children who died at the schools, he kissed the hands of Indigenous people he met. His penitential acts were to show this was not simply transactional. In the Truth and Reconciliation process, too often it has been experienced that the perpetrators apologize, the victims must forgive, and then money is given as ‘redress’, so everything can go back to ‘normal’ for the settler community.
In his apologies at every venue, he took responsibility on behalf of the Church both for the atrocities committed and the recompense and reconciliation demanded by the Truth and Reconciliation process. He did this in actions as well as words. We are all so used to words of apology, often lukewarm and under duress in our modern world – this penitence had to be embodied by the Pope for people to witness and believe that it was genuine.
The giving and receiving of gifts formed a central feature of his performance of penitence and the responding call of welcome and healing from Indigenous people. They presented the Pope with traditional gifts at each of the events and each time he was presented with gifts the Pope would give each person a gift in return, which showed he had understood the importance of giving of gifts in Indigenous culture. David Gaertner explains this in his book The Theatre of Regret: Literature, Art and the Politics of Reconciliation in Canada (2020) that looks in detail at the question of reconciliation in the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation process. He quotes Elder Dr Maggie Hodgson explaining the traditional ceremony of the Potlatch:
Words without actions?
As I watched the coverage of Pope Francis’ visit to Canada, I couldn’t help drawing a comparison with the way in which historical acts of abuse and discrimination have been handled in the UK. In particular in the Church of England with the investigations into terrible abuse against children and young people that have been uncovered. It reminded me, too, of the awful stories that came out of the anti-racism task force and its report From Lament to Action. I wondered how penitence might have been physically and visibly expressed here by those in power, and how it might have helped victims and survivors of such abuse to begin to heal. Instead, we heard words.
Pope Francis meets with First Nations, Metis and Inuit indigenous communities in Maskwacis, Alberta, Canada.
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Alamy Stock Photo
They may have been genuine, heartfelt words but they have not been demonstrated in actions. They have also always been followed by excruciating errors and omissions. Omissions such as the failure to make any of the promised payments to victims of child abuse, and the announcement that there wasn’t enough money to implement one of the most important recommendations in the anti-racism task force’s report. I find myself asking the question, If the Bishops had been asked to embody their words of apology, to go on a pilgrimage to the victims and meet with them and take responsibility for their suffering, would things have been different?
The Anishinaabe author, journalist and Residential School Survivor Richard Wagamese comments on reconciliation:
If the Church of England bishops made a penitential pilgrimage and heard firsthand the stories of those who have suffered, received their gifts and gave them gifts in return, would they have a more physical link to their suffering, a more intimate and personal relationship with it? Would this mean that reparations and measures to educate and reconcile were given a higher profile than, say, parish annual returns and mission figures?
There is a parallel image to the Canadian story from the South African Truth and Reconciliation process, as Mpho Tutu Van Furth articulates in her book Forgiveness and Reparation, The Healing Journey (2022) in which she explores, through the South African experience, the different impacts of restitution, retribution and reparation:
The Church of England has too often stepped into that role of saying ‘I’m sorry’ and asking the victims to erase their own injuries. Now is, surely, the time to embody the penitence and meet the people, hear their stories and put the words into action.
1. https://www.facinghistory.org/en-ca/resource-library/role-churches-0
2. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4232330
3. https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100015576/1571581687074
4. See the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada website: https://nctr.ca/about/history-of-the-trc/truth-and-reconciliation-commission-of-canada
5 All events were streamed live on the channel and then made available permanently, via https://www.youtube.com/c/SaltandLightMedia
ARTICLE FEATURED IMAGE: Pope Francis prays at the Ermineskin indigenous cemetery in Maskwacis, south of Edmonton, western Canada in July, 2022. Photo Credit: Maria Grazia Picciarella/Alamy Stock Photo