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Stó:lō Nation residential school probe finds 158 child deaths, potential unmarked graves

A 1957 aerial photo of St. Mary’s Residential School at Fraser River Heritage Park in Mission. Several years later the buildings were demolished after the new school was built in 1960.

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Stó:lō Nation announced the discovery of 158 deaths, in addition to marked and potential unmarked graves, at sites associated with former residential schools in Mission, Chilliwack and Yale on Thursday (Sept. 21).

At the historical grounds of St. Mary’s Residential School in Mission, the Xyólhmet ye Syéwiqwélh (Taking Care of Our Children) team provided an update on findings from work investigating missing children and unmarked burials at St. Mary’s in Mission, All Hallows School in Yale, as well as Coqualeetza Industrial Institute and Coqualeetza Indian Hospital in Chilliwack.

“Our people are carrying mixed emotions. We’re on a journey to confirming the truth that we carry in our DNA. We’re on our journey to discover facts to what we have already heard from our great grandparents, our grandparents, past chiefs and leaders about what took place in residential schools,” Ts’i:m Grand Chief Doug Kelly said.

“Our people are carrying the incredible pain that was inflicted upon them by removal from their home, from their parents, their grandparents, their families and placed in residential schools where there was no oversight to keep those children safe.”

Stó:lō Research and Resource Management Centre director David Schaepe and project manager Amber Kostuchenko presented findings for Stó:lō communities on Thursday morning and in the afternoon for the public.

Through archival research, the team confirmed deaths of children who either died as a direct result of their school experience or while under the care of the institution.

The research team confirmed with certainty the deaths of 96 children between the ages of five and 20 at the Coqualeetza hospital, 37 at Coqualeetza school, 20 at St. Mary’s and five at All Hallows School.

The team said many of the deaths were due to illness, with 79 dying because of tuberculosis at the Coqualeetza hospital.

Through oral historical research of St. Mary’s survivors, the team learned of cases where children were killed, as well as secretive burials of children and babies, and forced burials of children by other children.

St. Mary’s moved locations within Mission twice and through oral histories, the research found the old school to be “a place of punishment and starvation and the new school a place of pedophilia.”

“What we learned from speaking with only a handful of survivors is devastatingly traumatic and sad. Nothing less than absolutely heartbreaking,” Schaepe said.

At the old St. Mary’s school, the presentation revealed children suffered capital punishment, were exposed to diseases as a form of punishment and were subject to malnutrition and child labour. At the new school, the researchers said sexual abuse was rampant.

“We heard of terrible implications that need further work to further understand. Including a story of firemen responding to a fire at the old St. Mary’s girls’ dormitory and finding the remains of fetuses in the walls,” Schaepe said. “And as is being told in experiences at other institutions, that furnaces were used for cremation purposes.”

Schaepe says the question of who committed the atrocities remains the focus of the research team’s ongoing work.

Through geophysical data, the team confirmed the discovery of marked graves of children at the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Cemetery in Mission, situated on the edge of Fraser River Heritage Park and adjacent to the ruined foundations of the old school.

The team also confirmed the identification of anomalies representing potential unmarked burials located more broadly throughout the St. Mary’s old school grounds in examined areas.

At Coqualeetza, researchers did not identify any anomalies that could be interpreted as potential unmarked burials through phase one work. However, they did discover unmarked graves that could be associated with the hospital.

“At the Sqwá First Nation cemetery, we can confirm the identification of marked graves but without names that appear to be associated with the Coqualeetza hospital within that portion of the cemetery established for the hospital’s use,” Schaepe said.

“We can also confirm the identification of anomalies interpreted as potential unmarked burials that also appear to be associated with the Coqualeetza hospital, and the various burials of individuals who died there. We cannot confirm at this point in time whether these are adults or children.”

The geophysical search was preliminary and covered three per cent of the schools’ grounds, with more research to follow.

“It is too premature in our work and distracting to our efforts to focus on the numbers of potential unmarked burials,” Squiala First Nation Chief David Jimmie said.

The Stó:lō Nation Chiefs’ Council launched the estimated three-year project to find unmarked graves in 2021 and the Stó:lo Research and Resource Management Centre began the search at the site of the former St. Mary’s Residential School in August 2022.

The research centre used ground-penetrating radar, combined with archival research and oral testimony from those who survived to investigate potential unmarked graves and missing children related to the three former residential school sites.

The investigation came after the discovery of unmarked graves in former residential school cemeteries in Tk’emlúps (Kamloops), Penelakut Island (Kuper Island) and across Canada.

Other goals of the work included identifying Stó:lō children sent to residential schools throughout the province and country who never returned home.

The St. Mary’s Residential School was opened by Catholic missionaries in 1863 and was relocated in 1882. A new school was built in 1933 and closed in 1984.

According to the presentation, St. Mary’s was the first residential school to open in B.C. and the last to close, making it one of the longest-operating residential schools in Canada.

In 2004, a former St. Mary’s school employee was convicted of 12 counts of indecent assault in relation to his time at the school and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Meanwhile, the Coqualeetza school was opened by Methodist missionaries in 1886. It started as a day school but added a residence for boarding students the following year. A new school was built in 1889 but burned down in 1891.

The school closed in 1940 and the building became the Coqualeetza Indian Hospital. A fire destroyed nearly two-thirds of the building in 1948 and closed in 1969 after a new wing was reconstructed.

Stó:lō members of Skowkale and other First Nations subsequently took over the grounds and renovated the building.

All Hallows was operated by the Anglican Church between 1885 and 1920 and it was a segregated institution for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous girls.

According to the presentation, the Canadian government does not recognize All Hallows as a residential school due to its strict definition of residential schools and the Stó:lo Research and Resource Management Centre didn’t receive funding to do the research it completed.

Stó:lō Commemoration Ceremonies will be held at Fraser River Heritage Park in Mission next weekend at the former site of the St. Mary’s Residential School on Sept. 29, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

“It is with a heavy heart that we share an invitation to residential school survivors, their families and communities, community partners, neighbours and allies to witness a weaving of funeral and memorial ceremonies for the missing children and the unmarked graves and burials of the children who attended the St. Mary’s Residential School in Mission,” the Taking Care of Our Children team wrote on their website.

The National Residential School Crisis Line offers emotional support and crisis referral services for residential school survivors and their families 24 hours a day at 1-866-925-4419.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Catholic priests bless same-sex couples in defiance of a German archbishop

Same-sex couples take part in a public blessing ceremony in front of Cologne Cathedral in Cologne, Germany.

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER

Several Catholic priests held a ceremony blessing same-sex couples outside Cologne Cathedral on Wednesday night in a protest against the city’s conservative archbishop, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.

Their protest was triggered by Cologne church officials’ criticism of a priest from Mettmann, a town near Duesseldorf, who in March had held a “blessing ceremony for lovers” — including same-sex couples.

Officials from the Cologne archdiocese, which Mettmann belongs to, had reprimanded the priest afterward and stressed that the Vatican doesn’t allow blessings of same-sex couples, German news agency dpa reported.

The blessing of same-sex couples on Wednesday was the latest sign of rebellion of progressive believers in Germany’s most populous diocese with about 1.8 million members.

Several hundred people showed up for the outdoor blessing service for same-sex and also heterosexual couples. Waving rainbow flags, they sang the Beatles hit “All You Need Is Love,” dpa reported. A total of about 30 couples were blessed.

The German government’s LGBTQ+ commissioner called the service an important symbol for the demand to recognize and accept same-sex couples in the Roman Catholic Church.

“It is mainly thanks to the church’s grassroots that the church is opening up more and more,” Sven Lehmann said, according to dpa. “Archbishop Woelki and the Vatican, on the other hand, are light years behind social reality.”

Catholic believers in the Cologne archdiocese have long protested their deeply divisive archbishop and have been leaving in droves over allegations that he may have covered up clergy sexual abuse reports.

The crisis of confidence began in 2020, when Woelki, citing legal concerns, kept under wraps a report he commissioned on how local church officials reacted when priests were accused of sexual abuse. That infuriated many Cologne Catholics. A second report, published in March 2021, found 75 cases in which high-ranking officials neglected their duties.

The report absolved Woelki of any neglect of his legal duty with respect to abuse victims. He subsequently said he made mistakes in past cases involving sexual abuse allegations, but insisted he had no intention of resigning.

Two papal envoys were dispatched to Cologne a few months later to investigate possible mistakes by senior officials in handling cases. Their report led Pope Francis to give Woelki a “ spiritual timeout ” of several months for making major communication errors.

In March 2022, after his return from the timeout, the cardinal submitted an offer to resign, but so far Francis hasn’t acted on it.

Germany’s many progressive Catholics have also been at odds with the Vatican for a long time.

Several years ago, Germany’s Catholic Church launched a reform process with the country’s influential lay group to respond to the clergy sexual abuse scandals, after a report in 2018 found at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy between 1946 and 2014. The report found that the crimes were systematically covered up by church leaders and that there were structural problems in the way power was exercised that “favored sexual abuse of minors or made preventing it more difficult.”

The Vatican, however, has tried to put the brakes on the German church’s controversial reform process, fearing proposals concerning gay people, women and sexual morals will split the church.

On Wednesday night, just across from the hundreds of believers celebrating the blessings of same-sex couples, there were also about a dozen Catholics who demonstrated against the outdoor service, dpa reported. They held up a banner that said “Let’s stay Catholic.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Vatican considers child sexual abuse allegations against a former Australian bishop

FILE – Bishop Christopher Saunders of Broome tries to play a digeridoo during a World Youth Day 2008 media event in Sydney, Australia, on April 17, 2008. The Vatican is considering the findings of a church investigation into “very serious and deeply distressing” child sexual abuse allegations against former Australian Bishop Saunders, a church leader said on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023.

By ROD McGUIRK

The Vatican is considering the findings of a church investigation into “very serious and deeply distressing” child sexual abuse allegations against a former Australian bishop, a church leader said on Tuesday.

Christopher Saunders, now 73, resigned in 2021 as bishop of Broome, an Outback diocese of northwest Australia larger than France but with a population of only 50,000, after police announced they had dropped a sex crime investigation. He had stood down a year earlier after media reported the allegations.

The church investigation into Saunders began last year after the police investigation ended, said Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, the church’s most senior national leadership group.

A report of the investigation, overseen by Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, had been sent to the Vatican where the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith was continuing to investigate, Costelloe said.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is the Vatican office that processes cases of clergy abuse of minors, according to the church’s in-house canon law.

“Bishop Saunders, who has maintained his innocence, is able to respond to the report by communicating directly with the Holy See,” Costelloe said in a statement.

“In due time, the Holy See will make its determination. It is hoped that this will not be unduly delayed,” Costelloe added.

Costelloe issued the statement after Australia’s Seven Network television news reported late Monday the contents of the 200-page Vatican report.

The report found Saunders likely sexually assaulted four Indigenous youths and potentially groomed another 67 Indigenous youths and men, Seven reported.

Costelloe declined to comment on specific allegations.

“The allegations against the former Bishop of Broome, Christopher Saunders, broadcast on Monday evening are very serious and deeply distressing, especially for those making the allegations,” Costelloe said. “It is right and proper for them to be thoroughly investigated.”

The Western Australia Police Force said they had requested a copy of the Vatican report.

“If further information comes to light, police will investigate,” a police statement said.

Police had conducted two investigations into allegations against Saunders between 2018 and 2020. Prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to lay charges, police said.

Saunders is now Australia’s most senior cleric accused of child abuse in a scandal that has enveloped the church around the world.

Cardinal George Pell was the third highest-ranking cleric in the Vatican when he was convicted in an Australian court in 2018 of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral in 1996, when Pell was an archbishop.

Pell spent 13 months in prison before the convictions were overturned on appeal. He maintained his innocence until his death in Rome in January.

Saunders began working in Broome as a deacon in 1975 and became bishop in 1996.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Church’s costly failures in handling clergy abuse

— Its cover-up is causing many good people to lose faith and trust in the institutional Church


Members of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), a global organization of prominent survivors and activists in Rome for a papal summit, display photos of Barbara Blaine, the late founder and president of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), during a protest of abuse victims on the Piazza del Popolo in Rome on Feb. 23, 2019.

By Father Shay Cullen

The shocking truth about clerical sexual abuse of minors and women religious was revealed in research by Missio Aachen released in 2020. The pressures on women religious never to complain are immense. They are told by priests that suffering in silence is a great virtue.

Complaining of abuse invites retaliation and even expulsion from their congregation, the research reveals. These are secret crimes now being exposed around the world to the shame and embarrassment of the members of the institutional Church.

The abuse will end and the victims and survivors shall be free only when the truth is revealed, accountability is fixed and justice is done by convicting and punishing the abusers.

It seems that priests, called representatives of God once ordained, have a special entitlement to abuse minors and women religious, and enjoy impunity from accountability. That concept is now changing and a few abusive priests are being held accountable. However, putting them on trial is meeting strong resistance from some bishops and priests who protect clerical abusers.

Some Church authorities believe they and their priests are above the law of the state and some even flout the instructions of Pope Francis to report abuse. Denial and the covering-up of crimes by protecting the abusers is common practice, according to women religious who responded to the research questionnaire.

The research by Missio, a reliable, renowned, trustworthy international German Church-based organization, has gathered much evidence from women religious in Asia and Africa. Based on a professionally designed questionnaire that was circulated to women’s and men’s religious congregations and institutions, the results are disturbing and enlightening.

 “It is not possible to speak openly about exploitation, oppression, sexual assault, etc. without having to fear acts of reprisal”

The short questionnaire had six core questions and a cover letter. It was designed “to give the respondents the maximum space to describe their experiences as well as their personal view in their own words.”

Missio received 101 completed questionnaires. “From the 101 completed questionnaires, 91 percent were completed by women, mostly by sisters belonging to a religious order and nine percent by men, all diocesan priests or priests belonging to a religious order.”

The majority of the respondents gave the issue of abuse of women religious a very high level of importance. When asked what the Church was doing to address the issue the overall answer was: “Not much was being done.”

In summary, the respondents reported the reasons for this inaction by Church authorities because of a culture of denial, a sense of entitlement and a policy to conceal crimes and cover-up.

Some respondents said speaking out against abuse is taboo. One respondent said, “it is not possible to speak openly about exploitation, oppression, sexual assault, etc. without having to fear acts of reprisal or reputational damage.”

Others said the “efforts to consider cases of abuse within the Church [e.g. to carry out a study on the subject], are thwarted.”

Another group said “priests [that abuse women religious] are not sanctioned but assigned to another parish.”

Another convent of nuns said that “after the abuse in a religious convent, we sent a letter to all the authorities concerned, no authority signaled or sent an acknowledgment of receipt.”

Others said “the local Church is not ready to speak up openly as it would be a scandal; rather they even try to dissuade those who have the courage to do so.”

Yet another said “experiences of violation and exploitation that women religious encounter in their lives is not acknowledged as abuse.”

“How can the abuse of children and women religious be ignored, covered up and tolerated on a massive scale?”

Besides, it works to the advantage of local Church authorities to keep women religious where they are because they remain “a silent and silenced lot.”

The vast majority of clergy are upright, good, spiritual and dedicated priests and brothers helping the unfortunate members of society especially where government fails the people. However, they mostly remain silent perhaps because they fear retaliation by their superior or bishop if they report clerical abuse.

How can the abuse of children and women religious be ignored, covered up and tolerated on a massive scale in the Church? How can it not be branded as a hypnotic institution failing to protect the most vulnerable of all?

This is changing with civil authorities bringing abusive clergy to trial and convicting them. In Cagayan in the northern Philippines, a Catholic priest put behind bars for child rape and sexual assault, and allegedly using video voyeurism to blackmail a 15-year-old child victim is a first. He admits the acts but says it was consensual, despite the alleged blackmail.

This criminal abuse and its cover-up are causing many good people to lose faith and trust in the institutional hierarchical Church and thousands have abandoned attending Mass and the sacraments.

When the sexual abuse of children and women religious causes people, especially children, to lose faith in Jesus himself, that is a grave and abominable sin.

Revelations and investigations into clerical abuse by civil authorities in dioceses in several countries showed that thousands of children have been abused by priests.

The Gospel teaching of Jesus of Nazareth is clear — that anyone who abuses a child and turns them away from trusting in him must be held accountable by tying a millstone around his neck and that person be thrown into the deep sea.

Make no mistake, Jesus saw child abuse as a heinous crime. (Matthew 18: 6-7, Mark 9:42, Luke17:2)

The bishops seem to ignore these strong Gospel teachings of Jesus. Doing so is a denial of Jesus himself. He said to accept one of these little ones is to accept him. The opposite can also be true. Abusing one child is to abuse Jesus.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Paris’s Catholic Foreign Missions Society under fire over alleged sexual abuse

— The French Catholic Church is facing new accusations of a sexual abuse scandal within Paris’s Foreign Missions Society, an organisation dedicated to spreading Christianity overseas. As a criminal investigation has been opened into accusations against three clergymen from the group, a FRANCE 24 investigation by journalists Karina Chabour and Julie Dungelhoeff sheds light on the allegations against the society.

By Karina CHABOUR | Julie DUNGELHOFF

Another scandal that the Catholic Church could have done without: three criminal inquiries have opened in France into two priests and one bishop accused of sexual abuse.  

The three men accused are all from the Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP), an organisation founded in France in the 17th century to convert overseas populations in Asia to Catholicism. Today it claims to have 150 priests based in 14 countries across India, China, Japan and Southeast Asia.

Before the criminal inquiries were announced a FRANCE 24 team (in partnership with the Radio France investigations unit) was investigating the apostolic society to shed light on the inner workings of the prestigious institution suspected of covering up the acts of sexual predators working in its midst.

A series of scandals

The three criminal investigations now open in France concern two former missionaries in Japan, Father Philippe and Father Aymeric, as well as the bishop of La Rochelle, Georges Colomb, who is also the former superior general of the MEP.

They are respectively accused of rape, aggravated rape and attempted rape. They have not yet been charged with any crimes, and so are presumed innocent. Father Philippe and Georges Colomb deny the accusations against them. Father Aymeric did not respond to a request for comment made by FRANCE 24.

In a conversation recorded with Father Philippe’s permission by his accuser, the priest spoke of a “system” which he was introduced into when he was a seminarian with the MEP. He said his superiors initiated him into an active sex culture in which they held influence over him.

“I was a good new recruit… as a sexual object,” he said in tears.

The accusations against Father Philippe, Father Aymeric and Bishop Georges Colomb have all been made by alleged victims in France.

Yet accusations of sexual abuse against MEP members expand well beyond French borders.

FRANCE 24’s investigative team travelled to northwest Thailand, home to the Karen ethnic minority group, where it collected multiple witness statements accusing two priests of sexual aggression towards young children.

A code of silence

For more than 30 years, the village of Chong Kaep, close to the Myanmar border, was home to a boarding school run by Father Tygreat that housed up to 260 Karen children.

When Father Tygreat died in 2007, he left a complicated legacy. Residents in the region continue to celebrate the memory of the MEP missionary who, they say, came to bring knowledge and humanitarian aid.

But the priest’s sexual interest in young children also seems to be well known among locals. He is believed to have spent years offering the promise of a better future in exchange for sexual favours.

A portrait of Father Tygreat displayed in a church in Chong Kaep, Thailand.
A portrait of Father Tygreat displayed in a church in Chong Kaep, Thailand.

Father Tygreat was never investigated by police for his alleged crimes, but another MEP missionary in Thailand, Father Camille Rio, was perturbed by stories he heard about the late priest’s behaviour from a local who claimed to be one of his victims.

Camille Rio alerted his hierarchy within the MEP to the accusations in 2020.

“I was told that they had known about it for several months, that it was obviously all true, but that I had nothing to worry about,” he said. “As our lawyers had been consulted, the MEP was safe.”

Camille Rio said that his contact at the time was Gilles Reithinger, former superior general and current auxiliary bishop of Strasbourg.

Shocked by the response, the priest said he tried to raise the alarm again, multiple times, but to no avail.

At the same time, his relationship with the organisation began to deteriorate. Having returned to France, he is currently being prevented from returning to his mission in Thailand and his future within the organisation seems unclear.

Challenging the system

Asked about tensions between Camille Rio and the organisation, Superior General of the MEP Vincent Sénéchal said: “Father Camille Rio has led a number of projects. Unfortunately, the situation is tense and we hope that it can get better.”

Sénéchal maintained that the accusations against members were isolated incidents. “There is no culture of abuse within the Foreign Missions Society. We do not protect anyone who has crossed the red line of the law here.”

“The fact that one person or another has not respected their celibacy, or that another person has been caught up in individual failings, doesn’t make it systematic,” he said.

Vincent Sénéchal, superior general of the Foreign Missions Society (MEP) in Paris.
Vincent Sénéchal, superior general of the Foreign Missions Society (MEP) in Paris.

At the same time, there are a significant number of accusations that implicate the highest levels of the organisation, and the profiles of the alleged victims often point towards their vulnerability.

In France, one victim was said to have been forced into nonconsensual sexual acts for financial reasons. A victim in Japan who claims to have been raped is on the autistic spectrum.

Attackers allegedly used the homosexuality of some victims – still a potent taboo in the Catholic Church – to their advantage. “If you are Catholic and gay there is shame, so we hide it,” said one whistle-blower. “Making a complaint would mean coming out as gay to everyone.”

Testimonies also claim that MEP members were able to take advantage of the prestigious reputation of their organisation in the eyes of its followers and the church hierarchy.

“At the heart of the Vatican, priests who work for the Paris Foreign Missions Society are given an attentive ear because they operate in areas that are difficult to reach. They are the messengers,” said Sophie Lebrun, journalist for French Christian publication “La Vie”. “They have an aura about them.”

Phantom inquiries?

The MEP said it is taking the accusations, which are now the subject of an internal inquiry, very seriously. Sénéchal announced in May 2023 the launch of a vast independent inquiry led by a private external company into abuse at the heart of the MEP since 1950.

Multiple sources in Thailand that spoke to FRANCE 24 indirectly incriminated a second MEP priest, as well as Father Tygreat, who used to work in the country and is still practicing in Asia. Father Camille Rio also reported this priest to the MEP.

The organisation said that an investigation into the priest led by the local superior “had interviewed 11 people and did not establish a credible claim for assault”.

The documentary reveals the limits of this internal inquiry: facing the camera, the superior general of the MEP admits that it has not actively sought out victims due to a belief that doing so would risk forcing them to relive their trauma.

“There’s a difference between going out to find people and saying, ‘you were alive in this year, did anything happen?’ That is a proactive approach,” Sénéchal said. “What we have done is work with the information that we have available to us.”

The accumulation of accusations against the MEP has also not prevented two members climbing the ranks within the French Catholic Church.

Despite multiple warnings sent to his superiors, MEP priest Georges Colomb became bishop of La Rochelle in 2016. He is currently under investigation in France and in June asked to retire from his position during the police investigation.

His successor as superior general of the MEP, Gilles Reithinger, became auxiliary bishop of Strasbourg in June 2021. Reithinger has denied any role in the sex scandals currently affecting the MEP and is not the subject of any legal investigations.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!