Pope on “repentant” visit to Canada Survivors of indigenous schools

Pope Francis is due to visit a former boarding school in Canada on Monday, where he is expected to make a historic personal apology to Indigenous survivors of abuse perpetrated at the Catholic-run facilities over decades.

The leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics arrived in Edmonton yesterday for a six-day visit that the First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities have long awaited.

The 85-year-old pope’s trip, which he has described as a “penitential journey,” is primarily intended to apologize to survivors for the church’s role in the scandal that a national truth and reconciliation commission has described as “cultural genocide.”

From the late 19th century through the 1990s, the Canadian government sent some 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children to 139 Church-run boarding schools, where they were cut off from their families, language and culture.

Many have been physically and sexually abused by school principals and teachers, and thousands of children are believed to have died from disease, malnutrition or neglect.

A delegation of indigenous peoples traveled to the Vatican in April and met the Pope – a precursor to Francis’ six-day trip – after which he issued a formal apology.

But doing so again on Canadian soil will be of great meaning to the survivors and their families, for whom the land of their ancestors is particularly important.

Francis is scheduled to arrive at 10:00 a.m. (1600 GMT) Monday in the community of Maskwacis, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Edmonton, where the former Ermineskin Residential School – one of the largest in Canada – was located until its 1975 closure .

After a silent prayer in the cemetery, he will deliver his first speech in Spanish to an estimated 15,000 crowd, expected to include alumni from across the country.

At 4:30 p.m., Francis will go to Edmonton’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church of the First Peoples, one of the city’s oldest churches, where he will deliver a second speech to Indigenous communities.

“I hope this visit will be the beginning of a shift in history, a shift in the way business is done, and a way for us to begin our healing journey,” said George Arcand Jr., the Grand Chief of the Confederation of Treaty Six First Nations said on national television.

“I asked the Pope to go with us and create this new path that needs to be created.”

Since May 2021, more than 1,300 unmarked graves have been discovered at the sites of former schools, shaking Canada.

The country has slowly begun to acknowledge this long, dark chapter in its history.

Although highly anticipated, the Pope’s visit is also a source of controversy for some survivors and their families. Many are expecting symbolic gestures from Francis, such as the return of some indigenous artifacts that have been kept in the Vatican for decades.

“It means a lot to me” that he came, said Deborah Greyeyes, 71, noting that her “entire reluctance” would hear Francis speak.

Greyeyes, a resident of Edmonton, is a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, the largest indigenous group in Canada.

“I think we have to forgive at some point, too,” she told AFP news agency. But “a lot of stuff was taken from us.”

After mass in front of tens of thousands of worshipers in Edmonton on Tuesday, Francis will head northwest to a major pilgrimage site, Lac Sainte Anne.

After visiting Quebec City from July 27-29, he will conclude his trip in Iqaluit, capital of the Northern Territory of Nunavut and home to the largest Inuit population in Canada.

There he will meet with former boarders before returning to Italy.

The flight to Edmonton was the longest flight since 2019 for Francis, who is suffering from knee pain that has forced him to use a cane or wheelchair on recent outings.

The pope was in a wheelchair on Sunday and used a lifting platform to board the plane in Rome and was also in a wheelchair on the tarmac in Edmonton.

Francis is the second pope to visit Canada after John Paul II, who did so twice in the 1980s and again in 2002.