U.S. Catholic Church Formally Apologizes For Role In Indian Boarding Schools

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has formally apologized for the church’s role in inflicting trauma and abuse on generations of Native American children and families through its participation in Indian boarding schools.

By a 181-2 vote, the conference on Friday approved a 56-page document titled “Keeping Christ’s Sacred Promise: A Pastoral Framework for Indigenous Ministry.” In it, the bishops lamented that “many Indigenous Catholics have felt a sense of abandonment” by church leaders who don’t understand “their unique cultural needs.” The bishops also acknowledged the role the church played in running Indian boarding schools.

“The Church recognizes that it has played a part in traumas experienced by Native children,” the bishops said.

Elsewhere in the document, they said, “We apologize for the failure to nurture, strengthen, honor, recognize, and appreciate those entrusted to our pastoral care.”

For nearly a century, from 1869 through the 1960s, the U.S. government removed hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children from tribal lands and forced them into boarding schools to assimilate them into white culture. Children endured abuse and violence and even died at these schools, all the while being cut off from their families.

Most of the more than 500 Indian boarding schools were run by the U.S. government, but the Catholic Church operated more than 80 of them.

Pope Francis issued a historic apology to Indigenous people in 2022 for the “deplorable” abuses they suffered in Canada’s Catholic-run residential schools. But the new document from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops marks the church’s first official apology to Indigenous people in the United States.

On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, key senators praised