OTTAWA -- Canada’s bishops remain hopeful that a planned meeting in the Vatican with Indigenous leaders and the Pope will lead to further reconciliation despite the leader of the largest Indigenous organization in Canada saying she will not go to the Vatican.

As students filter back onto campus, one small group of first-year students at the University of St. Michael’s College will be thrust into one of the most difficult, uncomfortable and important problems this nation faces.

Whether or not reconciliation with Indigenous people lies in the future, such a reconciliation is impossible without an unclouded view of our past, from first contact to the present, Indigenous and Jesuit scholars have told The Catholic Register.

I have been listening to people within my (Catholic) faith community wrestle in a deeper way with Truth and Reconciliation this summer. The reckoning has been too long coming. Saskatchewan columnist Doug Cuthandrecently wrote that Canadians may be waking up to face our collective residential school history.  I hope he’s right. And I hope that the same will be said of the Catholic Church in this season.

OTTAWA -- Canada’s bishops remain hopeful that a planned meeting in the Vatican with Indigenous leaders and the Pope will lead to further reconciliation despite the leader of the largest Indigenous organization in Canada saying she will not go to the Vatican.

OTTAWA -- An online resource that faith organizations hope will help Canadians sort through issues for the Sept. 20 federal election has focused the often-tumultuous relationship between Canada and its Indigenous communities.

VANCOUVER -- Hopes are high for a generous response to the B.C. Bishops’ Campaign in Support of Healing and Reconciliation this month.

The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations will not meet with the Pope when a meeting scheduled for December between Pope Francis and Canadian Indigenous leaders will be held, and it’s still not certain if any AFN leaders will attend.

VANCOUVER -- The personal accounts of residential school survivors will be a key part of an investigation into the former St. Paul’s Indian Residential School.

Making up for the Catholic failure to raise $25 million to fund healing and reconciliation programs in Indigenous communities is about a lot more than money, says Leah Perrault.

It has been my experience that defence often follows discomfort when reconciliation is needed. In my Catholic faith tradition, the discomfort can be understood as a gift that invites us to turn back, to repent, to make right. And defensiveness is a self-protective strategy to avoid taking responsibility. Defences divert us (for now, or forever) from being in real relationships with the ones we have had conflict with.

To say this is a challenging summer for Catholics and their Church in Canada is putting it mildly. But where there is challenge, there is also opportunity and it’s vitally important that it is seized.

OTTAWA -- Reconciliation between Canadian society as a whole and Indigenous communities is possible two new Indigenous leaders say.

Even as ordinary Canadian Catholics and dioceses roll out plans to raise money and recommit to reconciliation, Indigenous Catholic Deacon Michael Robinson continues to feel the community anger over residential schools.

How would you describe the state of your faith in God in these challenging times?