Why Doesn’t the Vatican Apologize for Crimes Against Muslims?

Pope Francis' "pilgrimage of repentance" to Canada has not ended the controversy over historical Crusader violations and crimes, bringing it back to the forefront.

On July 24, 2022, the Pope went to Canada to apologize for church violations against indigenous people there and asked for forgiveness.

The Church played a major role in the violence against thousands of them for more than a century and their "collective cultural genocide" between 1831 and 1996.

 

Why Now?

Francis recognized the role of Christian priests, nuns, and religious institutions who ran boarding schools that witnessed serious violations to erase indigenous cultures.

They separated children from their families, language, and culture as part of a church cultural integration system that caused the deaths of at least 6,000 people whose mass graves were uncovered.

The Pope's apology to Canada's indigenous people reopened the door to ask why the Church and successive Popes of Rome refused to apologize for the crimes of the Crusades against Muslims, even though they apologized to all.

Prior to his "last pilgrimage" to the Middle East, the late Vatican Pope John Paul II apologized during a Mass on March 12, 2000, for the Catholic Church's position on Nazi persecution.

He apologized to the Eastern Orthodox churches for the violence and persecution of the Catholic Church, which helped to bring down its Byzantine counterpart.

He also asked the Russians for forgiveness and apologized for the inquisitions, indulgence, and persecution of scholars and intellectuals.

John, on the other hand, refused to apologize to Muslims for the Crusades because they were part of mutual mistakes and that the apology must be from both sides.

The apology for the torture and killing of indigenous children during their forcible evangelization was part of the Vatican's completion of a series of apologies for church crimes, and to ease accusations of confronting priests in different countries with sexual abuse of children in particular.

The Canadian Indian Residential School Network, funded by the Ottawa government and overseen by Catholic churches, was discussed, and in 2015, a landmark report highlighted the abuses suffered by survivors.

The Report of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission quoted school survivors as stories confirming the supervision of the policy of "cultural genocide" by the Catholic boarding school system.

The network was part of a policy aimed at integrating indigenous children and destroying their cultures and languages, under which some 150,000 Children of the Mitochondrial and Eskimo (indigenous peoples) were removed from their families and placed in those schools.

In May 2021, evidence, using ground-penetrating radar technology, was found on graves of children at a former school site in an indigenous area of British Columbia.

Other indigenous groups have begun similar searches near residential school sites, and evidence of more than 1,000 cemeteries has so far been found.

Calls from indigenous leaders for a formal apology from the Pope intensified, and a delegation that visited the Vatican ended up in April 2022.

But the Pope promised to visit their land and schools to apologize to them in their country. Indigenous leaders demanded that the Catholic Church abandon a 14th-century doctrine, which had been used as a justification for their repression and murder.

On his visit to Canada, Pope Francis apologized for the Church's use of hunger, sexual violence, and religious indoctrination by force to integrate them, describing forced cultural inclusion as an "unfortunate evil" and a "catastrophic mistake."

 

Date of Apologies

The Pope's apology to Canada's indigenous people for the crimes of the Catholic Church was not the first of its kind, as his predecessors had already made similar apologies.

Since becoming president of the Catholic Church in 2013, the current Pope Francis has made several apologies, most notably for the sexual abuse of children by priests, and in a 2018 letter to Chilean bishops he admitted to making "serious mistakes."

That same year he wrote a lengthy letter to Catholics around the world expressing deep regret for the church's role in the abuse and cover-up of minor children, admitting: "We have abandoned them."

During his trip to Bolivia in 2015, Francis apologized for "many grave sins committed in the name of God against the indigenous people of the American continent."

Francis' apologies came after his predecessor Benedict XVI (2005-2013) condoned the sexual assault crisis in some churches and was reportedly involved in helping them, the Washington Post reported on July 25, 2022.

A German investigation has previously accused Benedict of wrongdoing in his handling of sexual assault cases during his administration of the Archdiocese of Munich between 1977 and 1982, prompting him to express his "deep shame" to all victims of sexual assault.

Pope Benedict resigned on health grounds but was disgraced by the accusations against him. Ironically, he was one of the most prominent anti-Islamic people, and he made a famous statement that caused a stir: "Islam has brought everything that is bad."

Benedict delivered a speech on September 11, 2006, at a university in Germany, during which he cited a Christian emperor who described some of the prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman" and that there was a contradiction between Islam and reason, sparking protests and anger in the Muslim world.

Because of these offensive statements against the Prophet, the current al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb froze the interfaith dialogue with the Vatican at the time.

 

Ignoring Muslims

None of the Vatican popes addressed the Crusades and the crimes committed therein, nor did they apologize to Muslims for killing, looting, and occupying their country in the name of "the will of the Lord."

When John Paul II made an unprecedented public apology for the "mistakes of the Catholic Church in the past," he asked for "forgiveness from God" for "sins," without mentioning Muslims.

Interfaith dialogues between Egypt's al-Azhar presbytery and the Vatican to demand an apology from the Catholic Church for the Crusades did not result in an agreement.

The Interfaith Dialogue Committee in Azhar began its work in April 1994 under the late Imam Sheikh Gad al-Haq, when he was being treated in Switzerland, where he held a meeting with the Vatican.

When Mohammed Sayed Tantawi took over al-Azhar, the dialogue took on serious form, and a decision was issued to form a permanent committee at the Islamic Sheikhdom for Interfaith Dialogue.

The first interfaith dialogue between al-Azhar and the Vatican was signed in 1998, followed by a second in January 2001 with the British Church, but did not address the Crusades.

During a visit to Lebanon in September 2021, Pope John signed the so-called Apostolic Exhortation document, which carries dangerous ideas, including "calling for the evangelization of the world and warning against the Islamization of the Muslim community."

This prompted the World Federation of Muslim Scholars to issue a statement on September 13, 2012, criticizing the Vatican Pope's signing of the document and warning him against sedition and "intimidating Christians from Islam in the region."

The Federation said that in the past it had tried to dialogue with the Vatican, but it was unilateral, and called on the Pope to apologize to Muslims for the massacres, killings, burnings, and displacements that occurred at the hands of the Crusaders in Andalusia and the Levant, as well as his apology to the Jews.