Pope Francis offered a long-sought apology to the Indigenous community in Canada on Monday over the Catholic church’s role in the generational abuse they suffered at Indigenous residential schools for nearly 150 years.
The schools were operated for decades by churches and the federal government of Canada to force assimilation.
“I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry,” Francis said. “Sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous peoples.”
“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” he added.
Beginning in the 1800s, thousands of Indigenous children from Canada were taken from their homes and families and placed into so-called residential schools aimed at ridding the children from ties to their Native communities, language and culture. Some of the schools were run by the Catholic church, where missionaries participated in the policies of forced assimilation and abuse.
Upon his arrival in Edmonton, the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta, Pope Francis was greeted on Sunday at the airport by First Nations, Metis and Inuit leaders, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon, who is Canada’s first Indigenous governor general.
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Francis met with residential school survivors on Monday near the site of a former residential school in Maskwacis in central Alberta.
Francis said that an apology is only a “starting point” and acknowledged that some in the Indigenous community have called for further action to address the injustice of the boarding school legacy.
“Dear brothers and sisters, many of you and your representatives have stated that begging pardon is not the end of the matter. I fully agree: that is only the first step, the starting point,” Francis said. “An important part of this process will be to conduct a serious investigation into the facts of what took place in the past and to assist the survivors of the residential schools to experience healing from the traumas they suffered.”
