Though Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miller called the Easter accord between the Kamloops First Nation and two British Columbia Catholic dioceses a significant and historic “milestone,” there appear to be no plans for other Canadian bishops to immediately follow suit.

The journey to the Easter Sunday signing in Kamloops of a sacred covenant between the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (Kamloops First Nation) and Catholic bishops from Vancouver and Kamloops took several years, and it was the efforts of two men that began the process, say Kamloops Chief Rosanne Casimir and Vancouver Archbishop J. Michael Miller.

At the Easter signing of a Sacred Covenant between the Kamloops First Nation and two Catholic bishops, Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miller quoted former Chief Manny Jules: “One cannot reconcile without the other.”

Almost three years ago, reports of underground anomalies near a former Kamloops residential school caused a firestorm of media mistruths about mass graves, which became a focus of Pope Francis’ visit to Canada in 2022.

Calgary’s emeritus Bishop Fred Henry has been named one of the world’s “Top 10 people of 2023” by Inside the Vatican magazine for challenging the consensus on graves at former Indian residential schools.

The Archdiocese of Toronto is allotting more than $2.7 million to fund eight projects to support the ongoing journey of healing and reconciliation with Canada’s First Nation, Inuit and Métis people.

Archbishop Donald Bolen charged young Canadian academics with a call to action to be critical contributors to the telling of history surrounding Canada’s past relations with its Indigenous people.

One year after the historic papal visit to Canada, positive signs abound.

Pope Francis is getting personally involved in making sure sacred items and cultural artifacts held in the Vatican Museums are returned to Canadian Indigenous communities.

Close to nine months after Pope Francis’ penitential pilgrimage to apologize to Canada’s Indigenous peoples, Catholics from across the country gathered in-person and online to reflect on the historic visit and to consider the way forward.

Repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, endorsing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, confessing the sin of a colonizing mentality, promising to stand with Indigenous peoples when they struggle for their land and their rights and committing the Church to reconciliation with Indigenous people world-wide — all this arrived in a two-page statement issued jointly by two Vatican dicasteries as another step in the pilgrimage of penance Pope Francis undertook in Canada last summer.

Winnipeg is close to saying goodbye to Bishop Grandin. Soon, the streets, and anything else that bears his name, will be erased from Manitoba’s history. 

Indigenous Catholics, along with U.S. and Canadian bishops, are welcoming the Vatican's repudiation of a legal and political doctrine by which European colonial powers and North American governments historically seized lands from Indigenous peoples -- while stressing there is more work to be done in healing Catholic-Indigenous relations.

The Catholic Church formally "repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political 'doctrine of discovery,'" a Vatican statement said.

The $30 million Indigenous Reconciliation Fund has achieved its first-year goal of raising $9.4 million and the fund’s board has greenlit 17 projects.