ROME, VIA DARWIN AND EVERY MISSION STATION IN BETWEEN – The global Catholic Church this week marked the approaching one-year anniversary of the death of Pope Francis – a pontiff praised internationally for his humility, his solidarity with the marginalised and his 2022 apology to Canada’s residential school survivors – raising renewed questions from Australian Stolen Generations survivors about why the apology tour stopped at the Canadian border.
Pope Francis – who died on Easter Monday April 21 last year aged 88 – formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023 and issued a sweeping apology to Indigenous Canadians for the church’s role in residential schools. He did not make an equivalent formal apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who passed through church-run missions and institutions under the Stolen Generations policy.
His successor – Pope Leo XIV – is an American, elected by the largest and most globally diverse conclave in history. He has not yet addressed the matter.
Survivors and advocacy organisations had called on Francis to extend his apology to Australia since at least 2022. The Catholic Church’s Fifth Plenary Council that year committed to “recognition, reconciliation and justice” – language that legal observers noted is not the same as an apology but does fit comfortably on a laminated poster.
The WA Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation said at the time it would “welcome the opportunity to engage with the Catholic Church in Australia and the Vatican to facilitate a formal Apology to Survivors in this Country.” Engagement is understood to be ongoing.
Pope Leo XIV has so far issued guidance on artificial intelligence ethics, climate action and synodal governance. A spokesperson for Australian Stolen Generations survivors confirmed that none of these things are the apology.
The Vatican repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023. The land it applied to remains in the same hands.
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