M. David Huston lives and works in the Washington DC metro area. He is a husband and father of four who has previously written for poetry, international affairs, and LDS-related publications.

Pope Francis’s visit to Canada in July was a lesson in the importance of acknowledging and accepting responsibility for past missteps as part of moving into world of a new possibilities.  As has been widely reported, Pope Francis’s visit was seeking to address the abuse of indigenous/first nation groups at the hands of Christians generally and Catholics specifically.  Though news reports earlier this year of the discovery of nearly 170 unmarked graves on the grounds of a residential school for first nation children might have been the catalyst for this specific visit, the history of Christendom’s mistreatment of indigenous peoples (in the Americas, but also in many other parts of the world including Africa) is undisputed.  Many Christian colonists and explorers terrorized and subjugated those with whom they came into contact, and often committed these terrible acts on the basis of now-discredited theological ideas. 

Now, to be clear, Pope Francis did not directly do the things for which he apologized, nor did the Catholic church over which he now presides.  He did not authorize the colonization of Canada by Catholic adherents. He did not dedicate funds to the building of the now-closed boarding schools where the graves were found. All those actions were before his time.  And yet Pope Francis still sought reconciliation?  Why?

The answer is, I believe, found in the Sermon on the Mount.