Survivors of Australia's Stolen Generations are calling on Pope Francis to apologise for atrocities committed by the Catholic Church against Australia's Stolen Generations survivors.
The Pope has asked for forgiveness for the role of the Catholic Church played in forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their families. In March last year, the Pope apologised to Jews, heretics, women and Indigenous people for the past sins of the Catholic Church, in a general apology.
Francis has said he is on a “penitential pilgrimage” to atone for the church's role in the residential school system, in which generations of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes and forced to attend church-run, government-funded boarding schools to assimilate them into Christian, Canadian society ...
The Stolen Generations refers to a period in Australia's history where Aboriginal children were removed from their families through government policies. This happened from the mid-1800s to the 1970s.
On 13 February 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, particularly to the Stolen Generations whose lives had been blighted by past government policies of forced child removal and assimilation.
Opposition leader Brendan Nelson also delivered a 20-minute speech. He endorsed the apology but in his speech Nelson referred to the "under-policing" of child welfare in Aboriginal communities, as well as a host of social ills blighting the lives of Aboriginal people.
In NSW, under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board had wide ranging control over the lives of Aboriginal people, including the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families under a policy of 'assimilation'.
In Australia, between 1910 and the 1970s*, governments, churches and welfare bodies forcibly removed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.
In the 1900s, many Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities. It's estimated that as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children were taken between 1910 and the 1970s, affecting most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia.
More than 27,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 50 years and over in 2018–19 were survivors of the Stolen Generations, according to new estimates in a report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
The Catholic Church is committed to the development of Aboriginal expressions of theology and spirituality. The Catholic Church also aims to promote and support a greater understanding of Aboriginal peoples, cultures and social justice issues amongst the wider community.
Pope Francis comes to Canada to apologize to Indigenous peoples for the Church's role in the atrocities committed in the residential school system.
The Catholic Church ran over half of the residential schools in Canada. More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend the government-funded schools between the 1870s and 1997.
Generally the churches expressed interest in assisting and supporting all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and doing what they can to remedy the hurt and damage suffered by those affected by forcible removal in particular.
As Protestantism swept across many parts of Europe, the Catholic Church reacted by making limited reforms, curbing earlier abuses, and combating the further spread of Protestantism. This movement is known as the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Ignatius Loyola was one such leader of Catholic reform.
The permissibility of slavery remained a subject of debate within the Church for centuries, with several Popes issuing bulls on the issue, such as Sublimis Deus. By the 1800s, the Church reached relative consensus in favor of condemning chattel slavery and praising its abolition.
These children were exploited. They had to work from as early as 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. As many as 20% were abused, physically and mentally, during these years.
Trauma of Australia's Indigenous 'Stolen Generations' is still affecting children today. A report shows that children living with adults who were forcibly separated from their families are more likely to face a host of challenges.
But the girls, determined to go home, escaped from the camp and made a nine-week trek across the Australian desert so they could be reunited with their family.
Aboriginal land was taken over by British colonists on the premise that the land belonged to no-one ('terra nullius'). The history of Aboriginal dispossession is central to understanding contemporary Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relations.
The NSW Aborigines Protection Board loses its power to remove Indigenous children. The Board is renamed the Aborigines Welfare Board and is finally abolished in 1969. By 1969, all states have repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Six members of Nelson's opposition caucus — Don Randall, Sophie Mirabella, Dennis Jensen, Wilson Tuckey, Luke Simpkins, and Alby Schultz — left the House in protest at the apology. Peter Dutton was the only Opposition front bencher to abstain from the apology.
The New South Wales Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme provides ex-gratia payments of $75,000 to living Stolen Generations survivors who were removed from their families and committed to the care of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection or Welfare Boards.
The residential schools settlement obligated the 48 Catholic entities involved to pay $79 million, which was broken into three parts, including making "best efforts" to raise $25 million for residential school survivors.