Revisiting the Pope’s Visit

Note: We are currently journeying with an association of Baptist churches as they move toward a vote on repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, for which we provide an introductory resource here. This post revisits a previously recommended video from 2022.

In the summer of 2022, Pope Francis visited Canada on what he called a “penitential pilgrimage” to apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential school system. In a previous blog post, which you can find here, we recommended a lecture by Dr. Niigaan Sinclair (writer, editor and activist, and son of TRC Commissioner and former Senator Murray Sinclair) which provides an accessible overview of the Doctrine of Discovery, the history of residential schools and an analysis of Pope Francis’s visit to Canada.

We still recommend the full video (about an hour and a half, which can be watched in segments). Below we’ve selected three short sections that we suggest are particularly worth watching:

In this first clip, Dr. Sinclair gets at the core question behind the Doctrine of Discovery: “Are Indigenous Peoples Human?” (A 6 minute segment — watch to about 23:06)

In this second clip, Dr. Sinclair speaks about actions that can be taken to rescind the Doctrine (A 3 minute clip — watch to about 55:06)

Finally, in this third clip, Dr. Sinclair asks what the Pope’s visit means for the Catholic church and for Canada (8 minutes — watch to about 1:12:00)