US Catholic bishops launch new outreach to Native Americans, apologize for boarding school ‘traumas’

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — U.S.

bishops on Friday approved new guidelines for ministering to Indigenous Catholics, a long in-the-works effort to reinvigorate the ministry and assure those communities that they don't need to feel torn between their Native identity and their Catholic one. “You are both. Your cultural embodiment of the faith is a gift to the Church,” states the U.

S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document . It was completed as new details emerged during the past two years of widespread abuses inflicted on Native children over many decades at Catholic-run boarding schools .

“The Church recognizes that it has played a part in traumas experienced by Native children,” according to the new “Keeping Christ’s Sacred Promise: A Pastoral Framework for Indigenous Ministry.” The document received overwhelming support at this week’s USCCB meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. It is meant to help bishops “refocus and invigorate ministry among Indigenous populations in the United States,” said Bishop Chad Zielinski, chair of the USCCB’s subcommittee on Native American Affairs, who presented the draft framework on Thursday afternoon.

It "gives shape to ideas that Catholic Native leadership has been voicing for the past several years in listening sessions sponsored by the subcommittee,” he said. Ruins of a Native American boarding school on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation are pictured Oct. 15, 2022, in Mission, S.

D. U.S.

Catholic Bishops on Friday approved a new pr.