Ruing past boarding-school abuses, US Catholic bishops consider new outreach to Native Americans WFTV [Video]

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — (AP) — U.S. bishops want to assure Native Catholics that they don’t need to feel torn between their Native identity and their Catholic one.

“You do not have to be one or the other. You are both. Your cultural embodiment of the faith is a gift to the Church,” according to a draft obtained by the Associated Press of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new guidelines for serving Indigenous Catholics.

In the works for a few years, the document 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.

Called “Keeping Christ’s Sacred Promise: A Pastoral Framework for Indigenous Ministry,” the document is up for approval 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 …