Status: 07/30/2022 04:41 a.m
Pope Francis ended his trip to Canada with another apology to the indigenous population. He asked forgiveness for the violence and abuse their children had endured in church boarding schools.
Pope Francis has called on the young indigenous people of northern Canada to preserve their tradition and their land. The boys are the future in the areas, said the 85-year-old Argentinian in the coastal town of Iqaluit. The head of the Catholic Church was received in the capital of the northern territory of Nunavut by representatives of the Inuit with traditional throat singing.
According to Pope Francis, it is not enough to live on what others have already created. One must also conquer for oneself what one has received as a gift, the head of the Catholic Church explained further. The world that people inhabited in these areas was the wealth they inherited.
“Outrage and Shame”
The reason for the Pope’s visit to Canada was to ask for forgiveness from the indigenous people of Canada. In Iqaluit, a few hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, he primarily addressed the Inuit. For decades, tens of thousands of Aboriginal children have experienced violence and abuse in boarding schools run by the Catholic Church.
“Even today, even here, I want to tell you that I am very sad and I want to ask forgiveness,” Francis continued. He wanted to apologize for the evil committed by “quite a few Catholics” who contributed to the policies of cultural assimilation and disenfranchisement in these schools.
The 85-year-old met former residents and expressed “outrage and shame” at the way indigenous children were treated in the past. He went into the “great suffering” of the children who were brought to Catholic boarding schools “in order to kill the native in the heart of the child”.
More than 4000 dead children
Between the late 1800s and the 1990s, the Canadian government sent about 150,000 Indigenous children to boarding schools, most of which were run by the Catholic Church. They were cut off from their families, their language and their culture. Many of them were physically and sexually abused.
Officially, more than 4,000 children died, according to estimates, it may have been more than 6,000. A national commission of inquiry spoke of a “cultural genocide”. The discovery of 1,300 anonymous graves last year had triggered a shock wave.
“Pilgrimage of Penance”
The Pope described his journey, which began on Sunday, as a “pilgrimage of penance”. His apologies had been long awaited. In Canada, Francis spoke of “cultural destruction”, “physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse”.
After the visit to Iqaluit, which lasted around four hours, Francis set off again for Rome.