Following the discovery of over 1,000 bodies in two mass graves, Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday that he has urged Pope Francis to visit Canada and apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in the running of residential schools for indigenous children.
Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa, “I have talked personally with His Holiness Pope Francis to stress upon him how essential it is not just that he makes an apology, but that he makes an apology to indigenous Canadians on Canadian soil.”
Mr. Trudeau said many Canadians won’t be able to celebrate as the country marks its birthday on July 1. He stated, “Canadians across the country are waking up to something that Indigenous communities have long understood,” adding, “The trauma of the past reverberate very strongly today.”
According to the government, physical and sexual abuse was common in schools, with students being beaten for speaking their native languages. Thousands of children died there, many of whom were never reunited with their families, as a result of sickness and other factors.
Cowessess First Nation, an indigenous group in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, said on Thursday that 751 unmarked graves had been found at the site of Marieval Residential School in Saskatchewan, just weeks after 215 unmarked graves were discovered at a former school in British Columbia.
They further said that between 1831 and 1996, the residential school system removed about 150,000 indigenous children from their families and sent them to Christian residential schools, primarily Catholic, managed on behalf of the federal government.
Don Bolen, Archbishop of Regina, Saskatchewan, wrote to the Cowessess First Nation in a letter published on the archdiocese’s website this week, repeating an apology he says he made two years ago.
Earlier this month, Pope Francis stopped short of a direct apology but said he was pained by the discovery of the remains of 215 children and called for respect for the rights and cultures of native peoples.
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