Pope Francis visits Canada to apologise

Pope's pilgrimage of penance - 15th August 2022

Pope Francis has made a landmark trip to Canada to proffer a formal apology for the erstwhile Catholic residential schools across the country.

The government-funded schools were part of a policy meant to assimilate indigenous children and erase their peoples’ cultures and languages. There were more than 130 such schools in Canada, with around three quarters managed by the Roman Catholic church. The centres operated from the late 1800s, while the last school closed its doors as late as 1996.

Over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were removed from their families during this period and placed in these schools. In 2015, the abuses suffered by residential school survivors were highlighted in a groundbreaking report conducted by Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

The report spotlighted survivors’ personal accounts and concluded that subjecting such huge numbers of young people to abuse, sickness and malnutrition, amounted to “cultural genocide”.

In May 2021, with the help of ground-penetrating radar technology, the unmarked graves of children came to light at a former school site in Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc, a First Nations community in British Columbia. As well as gaining international attention and sending shockwaves across Canada, it also led to comparable searches and to date, more than 1,000 graves have been discovered.

Earlier in the year, the Pope received an indigenous delegation at the Vatican, to whom he expressed his deep regret over the issue, admitting that the residential schools caused him "pain and shame". He promised at that point to meet indigenous communities in Canada and to assist with reconciliation efforts.

Crystal Gail Fraser's a Gwichyà Gwich'in assistant professor of history and native studies at the University of Alberta, and she stated that the grisly discovery of the remains of indigenous children had been crucial in motivating the papal visit. She called the step "significant", adding that it followed decades of activism and calls for accountability from indigenous communities.

Characterising this trip as a “pilgrimage of penance,” Pope Francis remains hopeful that it will begin to repair the wrongs done to indigenous peoples in Canada by the Roman Catholic church.