Lifesite News reports the vandalism comes after controversial claims about unmarked graves at former Indian Residential School sites.

The cabinet's report, released on 19 September, attributes a significant rise in these incidents to unproven allegations that hundreds of children were buried at these schools, specifically the Kamloops school in British Columbia.

Despite initial reports in 2021 that ground-penetrating radar had uncovered human remains, no actual remains have been discovered.

Rise in church attacks

The number of incidents at places of worship skyrocketed following the 2021 claims.

Police-reported data shows 423 incidents since 2015, with 90 attacks recorded in 2021 alone.

This represents a stark increase from the previous average of 13 similar attacks annually before 2015.

"This includes incidents that occurred on the surrounding property such as an attached cemetery or adjacent parking lot or inside a religious institution" the cabinet stated in response to an inquiry by Conservative MP Marc Dalton who had requested statistics on the burning of places of worship.

Government and media response

Opposition members have criticised the Trudeau government's response to the wave of church attacks.

In 2021, Trudeau acknowledged the vandalism only weeks after the attacks had begun, stating that while such actions were "understandable" they remained "unacceptable and wrong".

Critics, including Conservative MPs, have accused the government and mainstream media of sympathising with those responsible for the attacks.

A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report highlighted the emotional response of some individuals to the residential school claims which opponents argue contributed to the rise in violence against churches.

Controversy over school claims

The allegations that sparked the rise in church attacks originated from discoveries at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, where radar technology detected soil disturbances initially believed to indicate unmarked graves.

However, no remains have been found, reports Lifesite News.

Residential schools, which operated from the late 19th century until 1996, were mandated by the Canadian federal government and managed by various Christian organisations including the Catholic Church.

Source

• Lifesite News
• CathNews NZ

One year ago, the leaders of the British Columbia First Nation Band Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc announced the discovery of a mass grave of more than 200 indigenous children detected at a residential school in British Columbia.

"We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths," Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc, said in May 2021.

The Kamloops "discovery" of 2021 created a major sensation in Canada and abroad. The Canadian Press honoured the children of residential schools as the "Person of the Year 2021."

In June, Pope Francis expressed his pain for "the shocking discovery in Canada of the remains of 215 children" at Kamloops. In an exceptional gesture, he promised to come to Canada.

However, according to several Canadian academics, what is still missing is proof human remains are in the ground.

The alleged burial ground was located with the help of ground-penetrating radar. It is said to include 215 bodies, some as young as 3 years old. The burial site is located on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School which was run by the Roman Catholic Church from 1890 to 1978.

The number of bodies was based on irregularities in the ground ascertained by the radar waves, according to anthropologist Sarah Beaulieu, hired by the band to scan the site.

Her preliminary report is based on depressions and abnormalities in the soil of an apple orchard near the school - not on exhumed remains.

The "disruptions picked up in the radar," she says, led her to conclude that the sites "have multiple signatures that present like burials".

However, Beaulieu cannot confirm that until the site is excavated - if it is ever done.

Eldon Yellowhorn is a professor and founding chair of the Indigenous Studies department at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. He has been searching for and identifying the gravesites of indigenous children at residential schools in Canada since 2009 after being hired by Canada's powerful Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Many of the graves he identified at residential schools in other parts of the country come from actual cemeteries. It is not always clear how the buried died.

Some of those found had succumbed to disease, Yellowhorn said. He cited one cemetery where it became apparent many children perished from the Spanish flu a century ago.

"I can understand why some people are sceptical about the Kamloops case," Yellowhorn told The NY Post. "This is all very new. There's a lot of misinformation floating out there. People are speaking from their emotions."

As Yellowhorn sees it, the actual evidence for the mass grave at the Kamloops site is thin.

"All the radar shows you is that there are anomalies or reflections," he said.

"The only way to be certain is to peel back the earth and ascertain what lies beneath. We have not gotten to the point where we can do that. It's a huge job."

Despite his own scepticism, Yellowhorn says it's entirely possible that if excavations are ever carried out at Kamloops, actual human remains could be found.

Sources

New York Post

Dorchester Review

"It's a moment of crisis - existential crisis - for catholics in the pews," said Darren Dias, a theology professor at the University of St Michael's College in Toronto.

"They may have disagreed with the Church's teaching on artificial contraception or human sexuality, but now they see the church engaged in crimes and then coverups. This is really difficult for people. The question is: Will they change the Church from within, or will they just walk away?"

It has been seven years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) called on the Pope to apologise for the abuses at catholic-run residential schools.

But it took last year's Kamloops announcement, accompanied by an internal backlash from shocked church members, to spur Canada's bishops and the Vatican to take action.

Canadian bishops apologised last year, and indigenous leaders will be asking the Pope to apologise in their meetings with him in Rome.

On March 28-31, the Pope will meet with the indigenous groups individually, before a final group audience on April 1 in the Vatican. Members of the Canadian bishops' conference will also take part.

Calls for a formal apology have grown in the last year. Several indigenous groups said ground-penetrating radar had found evidence of hundreds of unmarked graves at or near former residential schools.

Other critics are urging the Church to go beyond an apology and address other indigenous inequities. Doing too little, they say, risks further alienating a broad faction of catholics who've grown weary of scandal and inaction.

Professor Dias wants to see the Church champion the TRC's calls to action - 94 recommendations covering everything from new legislation to education, health care and language rights.

According to some catholics, the church's delayed apology for residential schools is reminiscent of its response to a decades-long sexual-abuse crisis. This was typified by a lack of acknowledgement, accountability and transparency.

Sources

The Globe and Mail

Catholic News Agency

Reuters

The Archdiocese of St. Boniface said Saturday that the three masses scheduled for Sunday at St. Emile Catholic Church have been cancelled on the recommendation of Winnipeg police.

During a July 10 mass, Father Rhéal Forest said residential school survivors lied about being sexually abused to receive more money during the settlement process with the federal government.

"If they wanted extra money, from the money that was given to them, they had to lie sometimes — lie that they were abused sexually and, scoop, another $50,000," Forest said.

Police alerted the church that they'd seen comments online and recommended cancelling services as a precaution, archdiocese communications coordinator Daniel Bahuaud said Saturday.

Forest acknowledged that a few had bad treatment. However, he said some of that was due not to nuns and priests but rather night watchmen.

The priest's remarks come as the discovery of unmarked gravesites near residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan have roiled Canada. It renewed scrutiny on a system that sought to detach Indigenous children from their homes and cultures.

In its 2015 report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said there have been "over 40 successful convictions of former residential school staff members who sexually or physically abused students."

As of Jan. 31 of that year, 37,951 claims for injuries resulting from physical and sexual abuse at residential schools had been received.

Father Forest has also caused concern over comments he made suggesting he would shoot church vandals

Photos from July showed the words "Save our children" spray-painted on Precious Blood Roman Catholic Church in Winnipeg. It is an apparent reference to children forced to attend residential schools.

"As I'm passing by, thoughts of anger. If I had a shotgun at night and I'd see them, I'd go, 'Boom!' just to scare them and if they don't run away, I'll shoot them," Forest said in the July 18 sermon.

He then quickly backtracked, saying: "But this would not help, it's bad to do that, I'd go have a chat with them." He went on to blame the media for making the vandals believe the Catholic Church killed residential school children.

Sources

CBC

Washington Post

In an open letter to the prime minister, Henry, who presided over southern Alberta Catholics from 1998 to 2017, accused Trudeau of deflecting blame for the deaths and misery of Indigenous residents at the schools by voicing his "disappointment" over the church's failure to formally apologise for its role.

"While acknowledging our own sorrow and guilt, and trying to own our sinfulness in the participation in residential schools, it is important to note the wording in our statement, especially the words, 'participation in government policies,'" wrote Henry in the letter dated June 7.

He went on to say the schools, some of which were also operated by other Christian denominations between 1831 and 1996, were often starved of resources by the federal government.

This lead to tragic outcomes, including the deaths of thousands of children, many of whom were buried in unmarked graves.

Cardinal Thomas Collins, the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Toronto, said comments made by Trudeau were "unfair."

"I think it's much more helpful, as we're all working on this long journey of reconciliation to work together, and not to be making these kinds of unfair attacks upon those who are trying their best to bring about and to work with all the Indigenous people for reconciliation," the archbishop said.

Henry's message was sparked by the backlash over the recent discovery through the ground-penetrating radar of the remains of 215 children buried in unmarked graves at a former residential school site in Kamloops, British Columbia.

In the letter, Henry quotes the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

It highlighted Ottawa's culpability in the national disgrace of the residential schools that forced 150,000 First Nations children from their homes.

"The federal government never established an adequate set of standards and regulations to guarantee the health and safety of residential school students. This failure occurred even though the government had the authority to establish those standards," Henry quoted the report.

"The failure to establish and enforce adequate standards, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools, resulted in unnecessarily high residential school death rates."

The neglect included malnutrition, improper clothing, poor sanitary conditions and ventilation that led to many deaths by tuberculosis, states the report.

Henry noted the document states Ottawa's failure to provide disciplinary standards contributed to the harsh treatment of students. This included sexual abuse and physical assault.

In concluding his letter, Henry stated, "We have a right to less pompous posturing and more forthright action on the part of (the) federal government."

But, he admitted the moral failures of spiritual leaders at the schools can't be brushed off.

"We didn't show enough respect to the native peoples in their beliefs and culture," said Henry.

A survivor of a Catholic-run northern Alberta residential school said the church's guilt in the severity of how they were directly run can't be overlooked or shuffled elsewhere.

"I hold the government responsible and the religious denominations responsible because (the churches) had the boots on the ground," said Cora Voyageur, a sociology professor at the University of Calgary.

"The churches could have said, 'We don't want any part of it,' but they never did. There was an idea from the churches of religious and spiritual supremacy. They were in the community — the government wasn't."

A recent poll suggests two-thirds of Canadians believe churches were responsible for the tragedies of the residential schools. The poll indicated about half of the respondents blamed the federal government.

Henry said that kind of mindset combined with Trudeau's comments are frustratingly misinformed and galvanised him to speak out.

Henry has yet to receive a response from the prime minister's office.

Sources

Calgary Herald

CTV News

The Province