Dear editor:
The Pope’s anticipated apology for decades of clergy abuse likely will be along the lines of: “I have tortured, raped and murdered thousands of children in my care as a holy person of ‘god.’Â I apologize.“
And you tell me “all is well,” your “apology” is sufficient to absolve you of guilt in the murders of little children?
This is the Catholic church that at one time routinely accused anybody it wished of “lacking in faith,” which led to that individual’s immediate hideous torture, followed by public burning at the stake even though that person had done nothing wrong at all.
Yet the Pope, who heads the church, which has committed murder for centuries, is deigning to give Canada’s Indigenous Peoples, (presumably as some sort of supplicants), the “honour” of his presence in Canada and an expected “apology.”
For some form of justice to be done, the Pope should be arrested on arrival in Canada and put on trial for murder, just as any other blood-thirsty tyrant would be – and, in a few cases, has been, even in our times.
We have an International Court of Justice and the Pope should be on trial there, too.
Regrettably, anything the Pope or the Catholic church says is similar to USA-style “thoughts and payers” in the face of preventable disasters such as school shootings.
“Thoughts and prayers” replace any real action to change matters.
The torture, rape and murder of Indigenous children by Catholic priests and nuns in the catastrophic residential schools was preventable, yet it was allowed to happen.
It was in fact “mandated” by the levels of government of Canada.
The infamy, guilt and barbarity of the whole “scheme” to “kill the Indian” in Indigenous children was madness.
Yet Canada did it and the church carried out its orders perfectly.
Priests and nuns “killed the Indian” and in some cases seem to have interpreted the mandate quite literally.
It is a travesty that the “pope”, head of the “catholic church” (which I no longer respect with capitalization), is coming to Canada to “apologize.”
We Canadians should be ashamed to enable such a travesty.
Instead, our country, all of Canada should be suing the church and all who aid an abet the evils that this church is constantly engaged in, including pedophilia, child molestation and rape, by priests here in the Niagara Regions and all over Canada.
Unless, of course, believers think such behaviour by the church in Canada is OK, mandated by their “god.”
Kaspar Pold
NOTL