First Nations leader recalls unsuccessful 2017 effort to bring Pope Francis to Saskatchewan

The effort to bring Pope Francis to Canada for a long-awaited apology over the Catholic Church's role in running residential schools can be traced back to a 2016 conversation between two seemingly homeless men on a downtown Saskatoon sidewalk.

Those men — one a bishop and the other a First Nations chief — had just spent the night in a park, struggling to stay warm in the unseasonably cool June air.

It was part of a 36-hour event organized by a local shelter for HIV-positive new mothers. Chief Felix Thomas of the Saskatoon Tribal Council was paired with Bishop of Saskatoon Donald Bolen. They were given used clothing and small sleeping bags, but they had to find food, identification, health care, washrooms and other essentials.

"We spent a lot of time together that weekend, became really good friends," Thomas, now chief of the Kinistin Saulteaux Nation, said in an interview on Friday.

What started as a conversation bore fruit this week, when the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has agreed to come to Canada at a date to be determined. In a brief statement, the Vatican said the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has invited the Pope to make an apostolic journey to Canada "also in the context of the long-standing pastoral process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples."

Thomas and Bolen, who later in 2016 was named archbishop of Regina, had first met four years earlier at a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) event, where survivors such as Ted Quewezance and Eugene Arcand shared painful personal stories about the schools and the disastrous legacy it left on their communities.

But Thomas said the key moment came during the homelessness event — far from the microphones and spotlight. He and Bolen were on the sidewalk panhandling, hoping the Saturday brunch crowd would spare some change.

"People would just walk past us. They ignored you. You were invisible," Thomas said.

"I told Bishop Don, 'If they can ignore you, then in their mind, the problem doesn't exist.' But if you ignore a problem, it will never be solved."

Thomas and Bolen, who was not available for an interview on Friday, talked about homelessness. Thomas noted that most of the homeless people on Saskatoon's streets — queuing at the food banks and shelters — were residential school survivors or their descendants.

"We both realized we needed to do more, something substantive for survivors," he said.

Thomas said there were many needs, but one common refrain emerged in the months and years after the TRC event: Survivors wanted to hear an apology from the Pope, on Canadian soil, as the TRC recommended in its final 2015 report.

"We call upon the Pope to issue an apology to survivors, their families and communities for the Roman Catholic Church's role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools," read No. 58 of the TRC's 94 calls to action.

"We call for that apology to be similar to the 2010 apology issued to Irish victims of abuse and to occur within one year of the issuing of this report and to be delivered by the Pope in Canada."