From Reuters:
“Pope to meet Canadian
Indigenous people following schools scandal”
(Pope Francis gestures during the
weekly general audience at the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, March 23, 2022.)
Pope Francis will meet
representatives of Canada's native peoples this month to listen to their
concerns following the discovery of bodies of children buried in church-run
schools in Canada, the Vatican said on Wednesday. A statement said the Pope
will meet representatives of Inuit, Métis and First Nations communities on
March 28 and 31, before holding an audience for all groups as well as Canadian
bishops on April 1. The schools, whose stated aim was to assimilate indigenous
children, operated between 1831 and 1996 and were run by a number of Christian
denominations on behalf of the government. The Catholic Church ran most of
them.
Later this year the Pope is
expected to visit Canada, where Indigenous people have asked that he personally
apologise for the Church's role in the schools. Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau also said the Catholic Church must take responsibility. The recurring
scandal broke out again last year, when hundreds of bodies where discovered at
former schools, leading to fresh demands for accountability. Last June, Pope
Francis said he was pained by the discovery of the remains of over 200 children
at a former Catholic school for indigenous students, but stopped short of the
direct apology some Canadians had demanded. read more The residential school
system forcibly separated about 150,000 children from their homes. Many were
subjected to abuse, rape and malnutrition in what the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in 2015 called "cultural genocide".
^ Hopefully this is a step in the
right direction for the Catholic Church (which ran some of the schools) and not
just a PR stunt. ^
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