Reflections on Pope Francis’s 2022 visit to Maskwacis – rdnewsnow.com

Apr 25, 2025

The apology Pope Francis delivered to Indigenous people on July 25, 2022 in Maskwacis, Alta. was monumental, if you ask Reverend (Rev.) Tony Snow.

Snow, who was there, is a member of the Stoney Nakoda First Nation west of Calgary, and is the Indigenous minister for the Chinook Winds (southern Alberta) region of the United Church of Canada.

His father was Rev. John Snow, and the family is descendants of the signatories to Treaty 7, which covers Alberta from the southern border to the Red Deer River, halfway through the city of Red Deer.

“A lot of groups thought that this may never happen and when it did, it was monumental — the recognition of our shared trauma and shared experience being identified from an institution like the Catholic Church. It helped validate for all Canadians what the role of the residential school efforts had been, [and] what the response [should be] towards those who deny that anything bad happened,” Snow told rdnewsNOW and The Everything Red Deer Podcast in the wake of Francis’s death.

Read More: https://rdnewsnow.com/2025/04/25/reflections-on-pope-franciss-2022-visit-to-maskwacis/