On the evening of Monday, July 25, 2022, Pope Francis arrived at the site of a former Aboriginal boarding school in Canada; Apologize and ask for forgiveness for “past unjust actions” of the Catholic Church.
The Pope began his historic 6-day visit with what he says is a path of “repentance” where he will once again express his grief and apologize for the abuses committed by Church-run boarding schools against indigenous children. . Pope Francis has issued his long-awaited, historic apology for the church’s role in the violence that has plagued thousands of children in Aboriginal boarding schools in Canada for more than a century. Arriving at the site of the former historical school, he said: “I beg your pardon. I’m really sorry”.
Surrounded by presidents representing all three Aboriginal groups, Francis apologized on the grounds of the former Ermenskine Boarding School in Musquasies, Alberta. The pope also apologized for what he described as the “devastating” policy of forced assimilation at indigenous boarding schools.
The Canadian government officially apologized 14 years ago for the establishment of these schools and paid out billions of dollars in compensation to former students. Pope Francis arrived Sunday evening in Edmonton, Alberta (west), where he will spend three days before heading to Quebec and then to Iqaluit in the Arctic archipelago.
During this 37th international trip since his election in 2013, the Pope will first speak to the Aboriginal, Amerindian peoples who make up 5 percent of Canada’s population, with the goal of bringing about reconciliation between the Catholic Church and Canada’s indigenous people.
It should be noted that between the late 19th century and the 1990s, about 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly enrolled in more than 130 public boarding schools, most of which were run by the Catholic Church. Where these children were separated from their families, language and culture and often subjected to violence, sometimes sexual assault, and where about six thousand children died, which the national commission of inquiry considered “cultural genocide”, in a country where the discovery of more than 1300 graves unknowns raised in 2021, a real shock; This prompted the authorities to declare a “day of reconciliation”.
