PARIS -
On a spiritual journey for "repentance" and "apology", under the title "Walk Together", Pope Francis begins a week-long visit to Canada on Sunday.
The visit comes within the framework of the apology that the Pope intends to present to indigenous groups for the historical violations committed by the Catholic Church against them.
The Vatican said earlier, "The Pope will visit Edmonton, Quebec and Iqaluit, during which he will renew his historic apology for the tragedy of the boarding schools that were run by the Church."
During this visit, the Pope will meet with indigenous people who have survived abuses committed in these schools.
Canada's indigenous population is about 1.4 million (Reuters)
ideological colonialism
A week before leaving on his 37th apostolic trip, the Pope assured Reuters that his trip to Canada would be a "journey of "repentance" and "penance".
Last spring, while receiving several groups from indigenous communities at the Vatican, the Pope expressed his "indignation and shame" and apologized to the groups' representatives, denouncing the "ideological colonialism" of which so many children were victims.
The indigenous population of Canada, who number about 1.4 million, suffer from high levels of poverty, and life expectancy rates are lower than the general level of Canadians.
Representatives of the indigenous peoples of Canada are known as the Palmytes, Inuit, and First Nations, or as they are called in Canada "Red River Métis", and they are found mainly in the meadows of northwestern Canada and Manitoba.
In light of Pope Francis' visit to Canada, the Canadian government, represented by the Office of Indigenous Services and Relations, announced its assistance by providing $35 million Canadian dollars to enable indigenous peoples and related organizations to travel and participate in the event.
A delegation of indigenous Canadians visited the Vatican last March (Reuters)
mass cultural genocide
Historically, the story of the boarding schools goes back to the first Canadian Prime Minister Sir John MacDonald, whose name - according to indigenous activists - was associated with the "cruel policies" that "killed" many indigenous peoples in the late 19th century.
MacDonald was accused of leaving famine and disease decimating many aborigines, and his government forced some aboriginal communities to leave their traditional lands, withholding food from them until they gave in and did so.
MacDonald was Canada's prime minister for 19 years in the 1860s and 1890s, and is known for his nation-building policies, but he also instituted the boarding school system.
While the abuse issue dates back to the late 19th century until the 20th century, when the internal education system in Canada forcibly separated about 150,000 Indigenous children from their parents, and were forced to attend 139 boarding schools across Canada as part of government policies aimed at forced integration.
Many were abused, neglected, raped and malnourished, in what the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission described in 2015 as a "cultural genocide".
Between 3 and 6 thousand children died inside the walls of these boarding schools, according to the same committee.
The stated purpose of the schools, which operated between 1831 and 1996, was to integrate Aboriginal children, were run by Christian denominations on behalf of the government, and were mostly run by the Catholic Church.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, launched in 2008 to document the effects of this system, noted that large numbers of Indigenous children have never returned to their communities.
They were also often not allowed to speak their native language or practice their culture, and many were mistreated and abused.
In the same year, the Canadian government formally apologized for this system.
Murray Sinclair, the former head of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said at the time that about 6,000 children died in those schools from causes such as illness, neglect or accidents, and that physical and sexual abuse was also common in those schools.
Since 2007, the Canadian government has reached settlements with thousands of living survivors, and has paid out more than $2.3 billion in damages, in what is considered the largest class action settlement in Canadian history.
And 15,000 Canadian citizens of those affected have filed lawsuits against the two bodies responsible for those schools in Canada, the government and the church.
Statue of the first Canadian Prime Minister Sir John MacDonald who set up the boarding school system (Reuters)
identity battle
The issue of abuse returned to the fore again in May 2021 when 1,300 unknown graves were found, and with the discovery of the remains of 215 children who were in the former Indian Boarding School in Kamloops, Western British Columbia, which closed in 1978. Some of the children were as young as 3 years old. .
This discovery sparked intense anger and indignation in the country, and new demands for accountability.
Since then, hundreds of previously unknown burial sites have been found.
Rosanne Casimir, president of the First Nation Group, announced the discovery of the mass grave.
The First Nation Group is one of the largest remaining ethnic groups from the ancient Indian Shuswab Nation, which inhabited British Columbia before its colonization.
"The boarding schools were built specifically to get the Indian spirit out of us," one of the boarding school survivors, Evelyn Camille, told Canadian media at the time.
"I became ashamed of my identity, this is what boarding schools taught me," she added.
A memorial and flowers to memorialize indigenous children whose remains were found near Catholic schools (French)
The school where the mass grave was found was opened under Roman Catholic management in 1890, and had up to 500 students when enrollment peaked in the 1950s.
Many of the children were sent to live in school hundreds of miles from their families.
The school was taken over by the central government in 1969. Between then and 1978, it was used as a residence for students attending local day schools.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called on the Catholic Church to "take responsibility" for its role in Aboriginal boarding schools.
While Canada's Minister of Indigenous Relations, Caroline Bennett, stressed that the boarding schools were part of a "shameful" colonial policy, and said the government was committed to "commemorating the memory of innocent lives lost."
The boarding school system began to dissipate, the last school closed in 1996. To this day, there is no complete picture of the number of children who died in boarding schools, the circumstances of their deaths, or their place of burial.