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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The Assembly of First Nations will be sending a delegation to the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI on April 29.

Phil Fontaine, chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said he hopes the pope will issue a statement to address the role the Roman Catholic church played in operating residential schools and the harm it caused to aboriginal students who attended them.

"This will greatly assist the task of healing and reconciliation for survivors, Catholics and all Canadians," Fontaine stated in a press release.

Around 75 per cent of residential schools in Canada were run by the Catholic church.

Bishop of the Diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith Murray Chatlain said Fontaine expressed a desire to speak to the bishops of Canada at an annual gathering about a year and a half ago.

"That was well received," he said, adding Fontaine also requested a meeting with the Pope "to see if it was possible for him to make some kind of statement about the residential school policy."

Chatlain said he thought there was going to be some kind of response from the Pope, but didn't know what it would be.

Many former students have reported physical, mental and sexual abuse.

Norman Yakeleya, Sahtu MLA, saw any statement as a positive step in setting forth the wrongs from the past and a step forward in the reconciliation process for the Roman Catholic church and the aboriginal people of Canada.

"It's long overdue because a lot of elders already passed that should have heard it," he said. Yakeleya then spoke about his mother, as an example.

He said she was told by priests that her children were being taken care of while they were attending Grollier Hall in Inuvik.

"She didn't know about the severe emotional and mental anguish that we suffered ... until after, when we started to speak about the types of experience we went through and she felt really, really bad," he said. "She said she didn't know. 'I believed the priest,' she said."

Yakeleya said, if the pope does issue a statement on the church's involvement with residential schools and the damages it caused, the bishop of Canada - as a representative of the pope - should travel to each community of the NWT to explain what exactly the pope was stating.

The bishop, he said, should "go to each community and sit down with the elders at each church service," he said. "If (the pope) is going to make a statement on the church's role, let the bishops say that in church in the communities."

Yakeleya said if the pope really wanted to demonstrate his respect for aboriginal values, law and culture, he would come to the Northwest Territories "and kneel down on our land."

"If he had a special delegation come to the NWT to meet with the people on this, because the priests were sent up the Mackenzie Valley to Christianize the people, not knowing that they already had their own form of spirituality," he said. "That would make a real big difference."

"It's another part of the recognition of this part of our history and trying to have the general society of Canada come to an understanding about it and a desire not to repeat mistakes."

Don Kelly, a spokesperson for the Assembly of First Nations, said on Thursday a list of delegates travelling to meet with the pope had yet to be compiled.

Yakeleya said the delegation needed to include residential school survivors and he would like to see NWT survivors make the trip too.

"I think the pope really needs to know, for good or bad, right or wrong, the role the Roman Catholic church played in the history of aboriginal people and maybe that will help the people in the NWT," he said.

Yakeleya said he hoped the pope would also put some pressure on Canada to jump-start the truth and reconciliation commission, which stalled when all three commissioners resigned.

A new commission has yet to be named.

Last June, the Conservative government issued an apology for the abuses and assimilation which occurred under the residential school system.

The truth and reconciliation commission was launched soon after, and was to travel across the country and document the stories of residential school survivors, as part of the healing process.