Pope Francis apologizes to Canada's Indigenous Peoples for church role in past abuse
Pope Francis issued an historic apology on Monday to Canada’s Indigenous communities for the Catholic church’s role in forcibly converting them that led to generations of physical and sexual abuse.
“I am deeply sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous peoples,” the pope said in Spanish, and through an English translator, before a crowd of survivors and their families in Maskwacis, Alberta, home to the former Ermineskin Residential School.
The pontiff’s trip to Canada began Sunday in Edmonton and will last through Friday with stops throughout the province of Alberta, Quebec City and the small town of Iqaluit, where nearly half the population of 8,000 is Inuit.
READ: 5 Key Facts As Pope Francis Travels To Canada To Apologize To Indigenous Peoples
“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” the pope told the crowd, who gathered in a pow wow circle where traditional dancing and drumming circles usually take place.
Also in attendance was Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who apologized last year for the “incredibly harmful government policy” that had called for the creation of the residential school system.
Prior to the public apology, Pope Francis prayed at a cemetery that holds the remains of students and visited the former site of the Ermineskin Residential School, which opened in 1895. The school has since been torn down.
The 85-year-old pope made the trip despite having torn knee ligaments that forced him to cancel a visit earlier this month to Africa. The pope’s poor health has also triggered speculation he may resign.
In April, the pope had expressed “sorrow and shame” for the church’s involvement in a system of Canadian boarding schools that abused Indigenous children for 100 years.
From the 1880s to the 1990s, the Canadian government ran a system of boarding schools that in 2015 a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission called a form of “cultural genocide.”
The pope’s apology on Canadian soil went much further than when he had met with a delegation of Indigenous people at the Vatican.
“It is painful to think of how the firm soil of values, language and culture that made up the authentic identity of your peoples was eroded and that you have continued to pay the price of this,” he said.
Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families and sent to these schools — 70% of which were run by Catholic religious orders — where abuse and neglect were widespread.
Last year, Canadian officials said more than 1,000 people, a majority of them children, were buried in unmarked graves on the grounds of some of the former schools. The Canadian government and Protestant churches that ran some of those schools apologized and paid reparations under a 2006 class-action settlement.
Chief Randy Ermineskin of the Ermineskin Cree Nation, who helped host the event, said this was an important day for his people.
“My late family members are not here with us anymore, my parents went to residential school, I went to residential school,” he told The Associated Press. “I know they’re with me, they’re listening, they’re watching.”
Clemente Lisi is a senior editor and regular contributor to Religion Unplugged. He is the former deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.