Pope Francis emphasized the need for reconciliation as he visited an indigenous church in Edmonton on Monday (July 25), part of his tour of the country to apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada's abusive residential school system.
As he had in an address at the site of two former residential schools earlier in the day, Pope Francis again asked for forgiveness.
The Pope said he was pained to think that “Catholics contributed to policies” that had led to “robbing communities and individuals of their cultural and spiritual identity, severing their roots and fostering prejudicial and discriminatory attitudes.”
Pope Francis made the comments in front of a congregation at the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples in downtown Edmonton.
The Pope is on the first leg of his tour of Canadian soil to heal deep wounds that rose to the fore after the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools last year.
While saying that nothing can “take away our own shame as believers”, he called for reconciliation, and said that they should look to the example of Christ, "crucified in the many students of the residential schools.”
The 85-year-old pope had promised such a tour to indigenous delegations that visited him earlier this year at the Vatican, where he made an initial apology.
Between 1881 and 1996 more than 150,000 indigenous children were separated from their families and brought to residential schools. Many children were starved, beaten for speaking their native languages, and sexually abused in a system that Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission called "cultural genocide."
Most of the schools were run for the government by Roman Catholic religious orders of priests and nuns.
Last year, the remains of 215 children at a former residential school in British Columbia were discovered. Since then, the suspected remains of hundreds more children have been detected at other former residential schools around the country.
Many survivors and indigenous leaders say they want more than an apology. They also want financial compensation, the return of artefacts sent to the Vatican by missionaries, support in bringing an alleged abuser now living in France to justice and the release of records held by the religious orders that ran the schools.
