Massachusetts Catholics for Indigenous Rights petition to Pope Francis

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This petition, created by the Massachusetts Catholics for Indigenous Rights in collaboration with CTA’s Indigenous Solidarity Collective, calls on Pope Francis, the USCCB, and the Canadian bishops to release all records of Catholic-run residential schools in the United States and Canada; actively support the process of identifying burial sites on residential school grounds; rematriate Indigenous human remains, artifacts, and objects to their appropriate communities; and create an action plan for addressing the 94 Calls to Action identified through the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Process by collaborating with Indigenous leadership. They release this petition in light of Pope Francis's July 24th visit to Canada.

Massachusetts Catholics for Indigenous Rights is a volunteer group of Catholics and allies working together to follow Indigenous leadership in considering and addressing historic and contemporary oppressions perpetrated and perpetuated by the Catholic Church. They recognize that the Church acts in conjunction with nation states, corporations and other entities to gain and hold power by systems of domination rooted in their respective histories, and in the Doctrine of Discovery (aka the Doctrine of Domination), articulated and promoted by the Church, at the expense of disempowered classes of people globally, including the Indigenous. They seek to follow the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that contradict this status quo dominion of some few over the vast majority.

The Indigenous Solidarity Collective, a working group created by our young adults within CTA, seeks to understand and address the Catholic Church's historical and current role in the colonial process, including the land theft, marginalization, cultural erasure, forced assimilation, and genocide of Indigenous peoples. Our goals include deepening our knowledge of Indigenous resistance and resilience through learning from Indigenous people, educating fellow Catholics about the importance of collective responsibility for the harms the Catholic Church perpetrated and continues to perpetuate against Indigenous peoples, and building relationships with Indigenous individuals and groups so that we may be in solidarity with Indigenous activism and follow Indigenous leadership.

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