In early July, the Rev. Rhéal Forest delivered a sermon at St. Emile Catholic Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba, about Canada’s residential schools, which had been sites of violence and sexual abuse toward Indigenous children for more than a century.
“Fake news,” Forest said about reports that the system inflicted psychological, physical and sexual abuse on the 150,000 children who attended the church-run boarding schools set up to assimilate them into European culture.
He asserted that Indigenous children enjoyed being at the residential schools and said that survivors of sexual abuse at the schools lied about it to receive settlement money from the Canadian government, which has paid $3 billion to 28,000 victims, according to the Canadian Broadcast Corp.
“If they wanted extra money, from the money that was given to them, they had to lie sometimes — lie that they were abused sexually and, oop, another $50,000,” Forest said during a video-recorded sermon that was removed from Facebook but reposted by the CBC.
“So it’s kind of hard if you’re poor not to lie,” he added....
.... During a sermon on July 18, Forest said he passed a church that had been vandalized with the words “Save the children,” the CBC reported.
“As I’m passing by, thoughts of anger. If I had a shotgun at night and I’d see them, I’d go, ‘Boom!’ just to scare them and if they don’t run away, I’ll shoot them,” Forest said of the vandals, according to the CBC.
He backtracked, saying that would be “bad” and “would not help,” and then blamed the media for prompting vandals to target churches by reporting on the atrocities of residential schools.
