According to the Russian Satellite News Agency reported on the 29th, Rhéal Forest, the acting pastor of a parish in Winnipeg, Canada, recently said that he did not believe the allegations of Indigenous survivors against the church's boarding school, and the local church authorities have banned him from holding sermons or issuing any public statements.
Riel Forest Source: Foreign media
Between 1828 and 1997, Canada forcibly removed more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families and "assimilated" them through the Catholic boarding school system. According to survivors, this practice has not only resulted in many abuses, but also to the death of many children without care, as demonstrated by the recent discovery of orphaned graves.
Forrest, however, said he did not believe the abuse had ever occurred at the boarding school, saying in a sermon in July that survivors who claimed to have been abused were actually lying in order to get more money out of reconciliation with the government.
"If they want extra money, they sometimes have to lie. Lying that they were sexually assaulted, oh, they're going to get another $50,000. "If you're poor, it's hard not to lie." ”
Commemorating the Victims Source: Foreign media
The pastor also countered the accounts of boarding school survivors, who said he had worked in the boarding school system for 22 years and that the feedback he had heard was mostly positive, with only a few reports of abuse. Forrest noted that most of the negative reports involved the behavior of night watchmen, not the behavior of nuns and priests working at these schools.
The recent discovery of a large number of unmarked graves in Canada has caused public outrage, which is mainly directed at pastors who have worked in these institutions. The scandal led to the destruction of many churches and statues of saints in Canada. The vandalism disappointed Forrest, who said he wanted to use shotguns against those who vandalized the church, but later retracted the claim, saying he was just joking.
Forrest also accused the media of spreading "fake news" about boarding schools and of those who, in his view, controlled the media as trying to "destroy the Catholic Church."
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The pastor's shocking remarks were filmed and the video posted on the social platform Facebook eventually caught the attention of the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. The latter forbade the pastor to give any more controversial sermons before the matter was properly handled. The archdiocese said they "completely denied" Forrest's statement and were currently considering some kind of punishment for the priest.
(Editor: ZLQ)