St. Albertans are amongst the thousands of Alberta residents preparing for the arrival of Pope Francis later this month — and not all of them are happy to see him on Canadian soil.
More than 120,000 people from across Canada are expected to come to the greater Edmonton region this July 24 to 27 to participate in Pope Francis’s visit to Alberta, the provincial government announced July 14.
Pope Francis is coming to Canada to meet with Indigenous people to address the legacy of residential schools. The Alberta stage of his trip will see him meet 15,000 people at the former Ermineskine Residential School in Maskwacis, and another 775 at Edmonton’s Sacred Heart Church, the provincial government estimates. On July 26, Francis will conduct a mass before 80,000 people at Commonwealth Stadium before meeting about 25,000 parishioners at Lac Ste. Anne.
Volunteers
Gary Gagnon, a Métis St. Albert resident who visited Francis in Vatican City April 1 to receive the Catholic Church’s formal apology for its role in Canada’s residential school system, said he has been dashing from meeting to meeting in recent weeks as a cultural advisor for the Pope’s visit. He plans to be at the Pope’s visits to the Sacred Heart Church and Lac Ste. Anne.
“There’s no greater guy you want to meet if you’re a Catholic,” he said.
Gagnon said Francis’s visit will fulfill the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 58th Call to Action (which calls on the Pope to come to Canada to apologize for the Catholic Church’s involvement with residential schools) and give the Métis a chance to tell their story. He hopes the Pope will expand on his apology for the Church’s role in the residential schools during his visit.
Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools superintendent Clint Moroziuk and Trustee Serena Shaw, along with Georges H. Primeau teacher Michael Kurschat, will be among the 60-odd people singing in the choir during the Pope’s mass at Commonwealth Stadium.
Moroziuk said they were recruited by Karen Koester, the religious education co-ordinator for the Evergreen Catholic Schools, who happened to know all of them.
“It’s a once in a lifetime experience,” he said of this chance to sing for the Pope.
“To be able to celebrate this mass with the Holy Father and do so by doing something I love to do, which is singing, is pretty special.”
Shaw, whose great-great-aunt once sang for a pope, said this will be the biggest audience she has ever sung before by a significant margin.
“I’m sure it will be somewhat overwhelming.”
Reconciliation
The reaction to Francis’s visit was mixed amongst residential school survivors reached by The Gazette.
Myrtle Calahaisn, who attended the Poundmaker residential school in what is now St. Albert, said she is unsure if she will attend any of the Pope’s events due to health concerns.
“I still believe in the Church,” she said, but noted the Pope could have made this visit and apology years ago.
“The sincerity of it is not what it should be.”
Hazel McKennitt, a residential school survivor who lives in St. Albert, said via text that she does not plan to attend or volunteer at any of the Pope’s functions in Alberta. She called the visit a celebration for the head of the Catholic Church, an institution responsible for the attempted cultural genocide of Indigenous people in Canada.
“A lot of money went to Rome on the backs of our children (and) residential school survivors,” she wrote, with church leaders living in palaces, while Indigenous people were kept in poverty.
“We could not even get any money from the Catholic Church here in St. Albert to support the Healing Garden for survivors.”
Gagnon said there are a lot of mixed feelings amongst survivors to the Pope’s visit, but he hopes it will help those who need it.
“I just want to see our community be healthy.”
Visit www.papalvisit.ca for details on the Pope’s visit.
