Pope On 'penitential' Visit To Canada Indigenous School Survivors

Edmonton, Canada, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Jul, 2022 ) :Pope Francis will visit a former residential school in Canada on Monday, where he is expected to make a historic personal apology to Indigenous survivors of abuse committed over decades at the Catholic-run institutions.

The leader of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics arrived the previous day in Edmonton for a six-day visit, which has long been awaited by the First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities.

The 85-year-old pontiff's trip, which he has described as a "penitential journey," is primarily to apologize to survivors for the Church's role in the scandal that a national truth and reconciliation commission has called "cultural genocide." From the late 1800s to the 1990s, Canada's government sent about 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children into 139 residential schools run by the Church, where they were cut off from their families, language and culture.

Many were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers, and thousands of children are believed to have died of disease, malnutrition or neglect.

A delegation of Indigenous peoples traveled to the Vatican in April and met the pope -- a precursor to Francis' six-day trip -- after which he formally apologized.

But doing so again on Canadian soil will be of huge significance to survivors and their families, for whom the land of their ancestors is of particular importance.

Francis is to arrive at 10:00 am (1600 GMT) Monday at the community of Maskwacis, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Edmonton, where the former Ermineskin residential school -- one of the largest in Canada -- was located until its closure in 1975.

After a silent prayer in the cemetery, he will deliver his first speech, in Spanish, to an estimated crowd of 15,000, expected to include former students from across the country.

At 4:30 pm, Francis will go to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church of the First Peoples in Edmonton, one of the city's oldest churches, where he will deliver a second speech to Indigenous communities.

"I hope that this visit is the beginning of a change in history, a change in the way business is going to be done, and a way for us to begin our healing journey," George Arcand Jr, the grand chief of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations, said on national television.

"I asked the Pope to walk with us and create this new road that needs to be created."