Pope hears horrors of indigenous schools

Canada’s leaders on Wednesday pointedly told Pope Francis of the horrors of Church- run residential schools for indigenous and the pontiff lamented that many were still living in poverty in one of the world’s richest countries.

Francis flew east across the country from Edmonton in the prairies of Alberta to Quebec on the St. Lawrence River for meetings with the country’s leadership in one of the oldest cities in the Americas.

Francis is on an apology tour of Canada, seeking forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s role in residential schools that carried out government policies aimed at assimilating natives by trying to erase their cultures.

More than 150,000 indigenous children were separated from their families and brought to residential schools, which operated between 1870 and 1996. They were starved or beaten for speaking their native languages and sexually abused in a system that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide.”

Addressing government officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the Citadelle de Quebec, the largest British fortress built in North America, Francis spoke of “the radical injustice” of the unequal distribution of wealth.

“It is scandalous that the well- being generated by economic development does not benefit all the sectors of society,” he said.

Indigenous people, who make up about 5 percent of Canada’s population, have higher levels of poverty and a lower life expectancy than other Canadians, and are more often victims of violent crime, and more likely to suffer from addiction and be incarcerated.