Pope to apologise to Indigenous groups on Canada visit

EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Pope Francis began a fraught visit to Canada on Sunday to apologise to Indigenous peoples for abuses by missionaries at residential schools.

It's being viewed as a key step in the Catholic Church's efforts to reconcile with Native communities and help them heal from generations of trauma.

Francis flew from Rome to Edmonton, Alberta, where his welcoming party included Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary May Simon, an Inuk who is Canada's first Indigenous governor general. Francis had no official events scheduled Sunday, giving him time to rest before his meeting Monday with survivors near the site of a former residential school in Maskwacis, where he is expected to deliver an apology.

Aboard the papal plane, Francis told reporters this was a “penitential voyage” and he urged prayers in particular for elderly people and grandparents.

Indigenous groups are seeking more than just words, though, as they press for access to church archives to learn the fate of children who never returned home from the schools. They also want justice for the abusers, financial reparations and the return of Indigenous artifacts held by the Vatican Museums.

“This apology validates our experiences and creates an opportunity for the church to repair relationships with Indigenous peoples across the world,” said Grand Chief George Arcand Jr., of the Confederacy of Treaty Six. But he stressed: “It doesn't end here – there is a lot to be done. It is a beginning.”

Francis' week-long trip — which will take him to Edmonton; Quebec City and finally Iqaluit, Nunavut, in the far north — follows meetings he held in the spring at the Vatican with delegations from the First Nations, Metis and Inuit. Those meetings culminated with a historic April 1 apology for the “deplorable” abuses committed by some Catholic missionaries in residential schools.

The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse were rampant in the government-funded Christian schools that operated from the 19th century to the 1970s. Some 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to attend in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes, Native languages and cultures and assimilate them into Canada's Christian society.

Then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology over the residential schools in 2008. As part of a lawsuit settlement involving the government, churches and approximately 90,000 surviving students, Canada paid reparations that amounted to billions of dollars being transferred to Indigenous communities. Canada's Catholic Church says its dioceses and religious orders have provided more than $50 million in cash and in-kind contributions, and hope to add $30 million more over the next five years.

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 had called for a papal apology to be delivered on Canadian soil, but it was only after the 2021 discovery of the possible remains of around 200 children at the former Kamloops residential school in British Columbia that the Vatican mobilized to comply with the request.

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