In Canada, Pope Francis asks “pardon for the evil committed” to the natives
Pope Francis meditates in an Aboriginal cemetery on the site of Ermineskin, where one of Canada's largest residential schools was located.
July 25, 2022. AP - Nathan Denette
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
Pope Francis on Monday issued a historic apology to Canada's Indigenous peoples, asking "
forgiveness for the wrong
" done for decades in residential schools run by the Catholic Church.
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He said he was "
distressed
".
In Maskwacis, the first leg of his trip to Canada, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the "
physical and verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse
" children suffered for decades in residential schools for natives.
A "
devastating error
", said the sovereign pontiff in a speech delivered in Spanish, acknowledging the responsibility of certain members of the Church.
These words have been eagerly awaited for years by these peoples – First Nations, Métis and Inuit – who today represent 5% of the Canadian population.
Translated into English, they were greeted with loud applause after the request for forgiveness.
Sorry three times
In total, the sovereign pontiff asked "
pardon
" three times, "
with shame and clarity
", during this first speech, delivered on the site of the former Ermineskin boarding school, one of the largest in Canada, open from 1895 to 1975. To receive it, several thousand people had gathered, under a fine rain and in an atmosphere of contemplation.
Many wore clothes with the name or logo of their community.
Others, the orange T-shirt symbol of the natives.
“
The policies of assimilation have ended up systematically marginalizing the indigenous peoples (...) Your languages and your cultures have been denigrated and suppressed
,” François continued.
For this "penitential pilgrimage", the pope placed the painful chapter of "residential schools" for indigenous children, a system of cultural assimilation that caused at least 6,000 deaths between the end of the 19th century and the 1990s, and created a trauma over several generations.
Some 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly recruited into these schools, where they were cut off from their family, language and culture, and often subjected to physical, psychological and sexual violence.
The discovery of more than 1,300 anonymous graves in 2021 near these residential schools had created a shock wave in Canada which is gradually opening its eyes to this past, now qualified as “cultural genocide”.
130 boarding schools
The Canadian government, which has paid billions of dollars in reparations to former students, officially apologized 14 years ago for establishing these schools set up to "
kill the Indian in the heart of the child
”.
The Anglican Church then did the same.
But the Catholic Church, in charge of more than 60% of these boarding schools, had always refused to do so.
Until last April, when the Holy Father for the first time apologized to the Vatican for the role played by the Church in the 130 boarding schools in the country.
After this first stage in Maskwacis, Pope Francis was to go to the Church of the Sacred Heart of the First Peoples of Edmonton on Monday.
He will celebrate mass tomorrow at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton and travel to Lac Sainte-Anne, site of an important annual pilgrimage.
He will then join Quebec on Wednesday before a last stop on Friday in Iqaluit (Nunavut), a city in the far north of Canada in the Arctic archipelago.
(
With
AFP)
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