The facts that led Pope Francis to apologize in Canada

Pope Francis is making a six-day visit to Canada in order to honor the invitation made by local Aboriginal peoples and apologize for past abuses.

This Monday he visited the town of Maskwacis, where one of the largest boarding schools in which the Canadian State organized the processes of “assimilation” of the children of the original peoples was located. There the Holy Father apologized and told them that “I am deeply hurt: I apologize for the way in which, unfortunately, many Christians adopted the colonialist mentality of the powers that oppressed indigenous peoples” before more than 2,000 people and heads of the villages.

Francisco had already apologized in April for the role played by the Church in the 130 indigenous pensioners in the country, lamenting the “ideological colonization” and the “assimilation action” of which “so many children were victims.”

Pope Francis apologizes for the evil that so many Christians did to the indigenous

Around 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly enrolled in these centers, where they were separated from their families, their language and their culture and were often victims of physical, psychological and sexual violence.

Canada is gradually opening its eyes to this past described as “cultural genocide” by a national commission of inquiry. The discovery of more than 1,300 anonymous graves in 2021 near these centers caused a wave of rejection.

It is estimated that nearly 150,000 children were torn from their families, while more than 4,000 died from abuse and disease. Most buried in mass graves without any identification.

“To tell you, with all my heart, that I am deeply hurt: I apologize for the way in which, unfortunately, many Christians adopted the colonialist mentality of the powers that oppressed indigenous peoples,” he said Monday.

Pope Francis receives in Canada the welcome of the indigenous people

And he also apologized, “in particular, for the way in which many members of the Church and religious communities cooperated, also through indifference, in those projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation of the governments of the time, who ended up in the residential school system.

“I would like to repeat with shame and clarity: I humbly apologize for the evil that so many Christians committed against indigenous peoples,” he insisted.

The pontiff also apologized for not being able to visit other schools such as the one in Kamloops, where the rest of more than a hundred children were found last year, but assured that he knows “the suffering, traumas and challenges of indigenous peoples. in all regions of this country. (YO)