Pope Francis Apologies To Canada’s Indigenous Community For ‘Disastrous’ Residential Schools

Pope Francis appeared in Alberta to present a historic apology to Native peoples in Canada for the system of residential schools, which was a program created by the Catholic Church and the Canadian government to assimilate indigenous communities.

Speaking at the site of a former residential school, Francis called the schools a “disastrous error” of the church and promised that further investigation would occur. “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said.

Canadian officials separated indigenous children from their families and forced as many as 150,000 of these children to attend these schools against their will from the 19th century to as recent as the 70s. The schools were known as hotbeds for sexual abuse of students.

Potential burial sites were also discovered at some of these schools as well as counterpart programs in the United States. Francis said he has continued to feel a “sense of sorrow, indignation and shame” since his first meeting with one of the Native delegations. He shared that they gave him a set of moccasins meant to symbolize children who died in those schools and asked that Francis return them when he came back to Canadian soil,

This was the Pope’s first visit on a six-day “penitential pilgrimage” that he is taking which includes stops in Quebec City and northern cities like Iqaluit, Nunavut. Emotions were extremely high and raw at the event, as there were people who were descended from former students and living former students themselves present.