Pope Francis on Friday made a historic apology to Canada’s Indigenous peoples for the “deplorable” abuses they suffered in Canada’s Catholic-run residential schools, begging forgiveness during an audience with dozens of members of the Métis, Inuit and First Nations communities who came to Rome seeking a papal apology. He said he hoped to visit Canada in late July to deliver the apology in person.
More than 150,000 native children in Canada were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools for more than a century in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes and culture. The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse was rampant at the schools.
Francis listened to the stories of Indigenous people at several sessions over the week. He finally told them that ripping children from their families, cutting off their roots, traditions and culture, was a “counter-witness” to the Gospel that the residential school system purported to uphold.
“I feel shame – sorrow and shame – for the role that a number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had in all these things that wounded you,” he said in the Apostolic Palace on 1 April. “All these things are contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
In words that brought some listeners to tears, he said: “For the deplorable conduct of those members of the Catholic Church, I ask forgiveness of the Lord. And I want to tell you from my heart, that I am greatly pained. And I unite myself with the Canadian bishops in apologising.”
For the Church, the original sin was an inability to see the presence of God among Indigenous cultures, Francis insisted.
Last year several Indigenous communities announced that they had discovered signs of human remains, likely to be those of children, in unmarked graves on the grounds of former schools. Survivors testified at Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings that children died in the schools and were buried on the grounds. The Commission called the school system a “conscious policy of cultural genocide”.
07 April 2022, The Tablet
Pope asks forgiveness of Indigenous peoples
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