Pope Francis will meet Monday with survivors of a former residential school for indigenous people in Canada, where he will renew his apology for the Church’s role for more than a century in the violence inflicted on thousands of minors from indigenous peoples.
(Also read: Pope Francis starts a historic visit to Canada)
The 85-year-old Argentine pontiff arrived in Edmonton (Alberta province) on Sunday for a six-day visit that has been highly anticipated by local aboriginal peoples mainly from three groups: First Nations, Metis and Inuit.
At the center of this “penitential pilgrimage” is the painful chapter of “residential schools” for indigenous children, a system of cultural assimilation that has caused the death of at least 6,000 minors due to disease, malnutrition, neglect or abuse since the end of the 19th century. until the 1990s, creating trauma across generations.
(It may interest you: The pope meets in Canada with survivors of a school for indigenous people)
They offer their apologies
The Canadian government, which has compensated former students with millions of dollars, officially excused itself 14 years ago for having created these schools to “kill the indigenous in the heart of the child.”
After the government did, the Anglican church also apologized. But the Catholic Church, in charge of more than 60 percent of these schools, has so far refused to do so.
It was last April that everything changed, when Pope Francis apologized at the Vatican and had promised to come to Canada. So now thousands of indigenous people are waiting for the Pontiff to reiterate his apologies, this time in his territory.
Francisco will appear in Maskwacis, province of Alberta, about a hundred kilometers south of Edmonton, where the former Ermineskin residential school is located, one of the largest in Canada, open from 1895 to 1975.
After a silent prayer in the cemetery, the Pope will deliver his first speech, in Spanish, where some 15,000 people are expected, including former students of indigenous pensions.
Later, the Catholic hierarch will be in the church of the Sacred Heart of the First Peoples of Edmonton, one of the oldest in the city, rebuilt after a fire in 2020, and where he will deliver a second speech in front of the indigenous communities.
‘healing journey’
“I hope that this visit will be the beginning of a change in history … and a way to begin our journey of healing,” said George Arcand Jr., grand chief of the Confederation of Treaty No. First Nations. 6, to Canadian public television.
In April, the Holy Father presented his apologies for the first time at the Vatican for the role played by the Church in the country’s 130 indigenous pensioners, lamenting the “ideological colonization” and “assimilation action” by which “so many children They were victims.”
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 slowly 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. Long awaited, the papal visit raises hope among some survivors and their families.
Many also expect symbolic gestures, such as the restitution of indigenous art objects preserved in the Vatican for decades.. On Tuesday, the pope will celebrate Mass at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium where some 65,000 people are expected, before heading to Lake Sainte-Anne, the site of a major annual pilgrimage.
On Wednesday, he will visit Québec City before the last leg of the trip, on Friday in Iqaluit (Nunavut), a city in northern Canada in the Arctic archipelago. Weakened by pain in his knees, the Argentine Jesuit appeared on Sunday in a wheelchair but smiling during his arrival in Edmonton.
His agenda was accommodated to avoid large displacements due to his state of health, according to the organizers.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP
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