Pilgrimage of Penance  for the Canadian Indigenous by Pope France

Pope Francis (85) landed in Canada for a pastoral visit and a historic apology for school abuses in Canada. Pope Francis apologized to the Indigenous people of Canada for the role of the Catholic Church in the Canadian Indian residential system. Pope Francis will visit a former residential school in Edmonton today, where he is expected to make a historic personal apology to the Indigenous and hopes it will help heal the wrongs done to indigenous people. His itinerary includes stops in the provinces of Alberta and Quebec and the northern territory of Nunavut. Absent from the Pope’s visit is a stop in Tk’emlups te Secwe[emc, a First Nations Community in British Columbia, where the discovery last summer of evidence of 200 unmarked graves on the grounds of a former residential school led to nationwide calls for reconciliation. The discovery received international attention and sent shockwaves across Canada.

In 2015, abuses suffered by residential school survivors were highlighted in a landmark report by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The government-funded schools were part of a policy meant to assimilate indigenous children and destroy indigenous cultures and languages. Over 150, 000 First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children were taken from their families during this period and placed in these schools. The Roman Catholic Church operated up to 70 per cent of residential schools. There were more than 130 such scattered across the country, the last closing down in 1996.