Pope deeply sorry for abuse in Canada’s church schools
POPE FRANCIS expressed his “sorrow, indignation and shame” as he apologised for the Catholic Church’s role in the abuse of more than 150,000 Canadian Indigenous children who were taken from their families and packed off to boarding schools.
Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas, offered an apology to around 2,000 survivors gathered at the site of one of the biggest of the former residential schools, where children were starved, beaten and sexually abused in a system that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide”.
The Pope went even further, apologising for Christian support of the overall “colonising mentality” of the times and calling for a “serious investigation” of the schools to assist survivors and descendants in healing.
Among those gathered in the town of Maskwacis in Alberta were tribal chiefs, some of them in beaded shirts and feathered headdresses, others beating traditional drums.
The pontiff said he felt “a deep sense of pain and remorse” having heard of the “devastating experiences” suffered by children at the schools, a decadeslong system which he described as a “deplorable evil” and “catastrophic” for Indigenous people.
“I humbly beg forgiveness ... for the evil committed by so many Christians,” he said.
Around 4,000 children died from disease, neglect and other causes, with many buried in mass graves, which have come to light in recent years.