EDMINTON, Alberta (Archyde.com) – Pope Francis arrives in Canada on Sunday for a visit he described as a “journey of penance” to apologize for abuses by largely Catholic boarding schools once morest Indigenous children.
The Pope’s plane is expected to land in Edmonton, western Alberta, on Sunday morning (1720 GMT), the first of three stops across the country. The Pope will visit Quebec City and Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut province, and leave on Friday.
Between 1881 and 1996, more than 150,000 Aboriginal children were separated from their families and transferred to boarding schools. Many children were starved, beaten and sexually abused in a system that the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission described as “cultural genocide”.
Although Canada’s leaders have known of the deaths of large numbers of children in these schools since 1907, the issue has gained in importance following the discovery of unidentified graves in or near the locations of these former boarding schools last year.
Responding to pressure from the discovery of these tombs, the Pope apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in schools earlier this year during a visit by indigenous delegates to the Vatican.
And now the Pope comes to apologize on Canadian soil. But survivors and indigenous leaders told Archyde.com they wanted more than an apology.
