it is unjust to accept evil, and it is even worse to become accustomed to evil, as if it were an inescapable dynamic caused by the events of the past

AN ARTICLE ABOUT Good Pope Francis today issuing the long sought apology from the Pope for the Catholic Church's role in the wider Canadian residential school policy proves that he's got the pastoral ability and experience as a pastor that his immediate predecessors lacked in such abundance.

The April 1 encounter was the fourth occasion that Francis met with representatives of Canada’s Indigenous community visiting Rome this week. From March 28 - April 1, the pope had previously held separate meetings with delegates from the First Nations, Métis National Council and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. 

“Through your voices I have been able to touch with my own hands and carry within me, with great sadness in my heart, the stories of suffering, deprivation, discriminatory treatment and various forms of abuse suffered by several of you,” the pope said on Friday. 

“It is chilling to think of the will to instill a sense of inferiority, to make someone lose his or her cultural identity, to sever their roots,” he continued.

After sitting through hours of testimonials throughout the week, Francis said he felt both “indignation and shame” at what he had heard. 

“Indignation,” he said, “because it is unjust to accept evil, and it is even worse to become accustomed to evil, as if it were an inescapable dynamic caused by the events of the past.”

“And I also feel ashamed,” he continued. “Pain and shame for the role that several Catholics, particularly with educational responsibilities, have played in all that has hurt you, in the abuses and disrespect toward your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values.”

The contrast between that and the ruinously expensive show-biz extravaganza of John Paul II's trip to Canada couldn't be greater.   

The example of the late Saint, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his associates in the long Reconciliation process in South Africa, something like that within the Church should probably cover this, one in which the testimony of those wronged and those who can speak credibly on behalf of those who aren't able to speak for them will give credibility to any proposed reconciliation and healing.  I will be interested to see if anything like that happens in the Synod on Synodality that is going on produces anything like that and where it will go.  A number of national areas of the Catholic Church are well ahead of where the U.S. Church is in that, I believe Canada is doing a far better job of it, from what I've read.

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It strikes me that this sentence from Pope Francis is relevant to what I posted earlier, about how habituated we are to the Supreme Court usurpation of absolute power and the evil of that banal state of passive, habitual acceptance of it:

“Indignation because it is unjust to accept evil, and it is even worse to become accustomed to evil, as if it were an inescapable dynamic caused by the events of the past.”

That says it so well that I'm sure I'll use it soon in addressing the judicial power and the disgusting and false aroma of sanctity and assertion that the Supreme Court is deserving of a piety which even the Pope is rejecting as a given for the Catholic Church he is the head of.  Would that the Supreme Court "justices" would be so humble.