Pope Francis apologizes to Canadian Indigenous groups for Catholic Church's role in 'cultural genocide'

In a long-awaited act of reconciliation, Pope Francis apologized to representatives of Canada’s Indigenous communities on Friday for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the establishment of residential schools which activists and historians have claimed sought to erase native cultures and where countless students suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

In an address to Indigenous leaders in Rome, the pontiff asked for pardon for the Church’s sins and said he would like to make a trip to Canada in July – a move praised by the Indigenous community, which has long said an apology should be made on Canadian soil, the New York Times reported.

"For the deplorable behavior of those members of the Catholic Church, I ask forgiveness from God and I would like to tell you from the bottom of my heart that I am very pained," he said, speaking in Italian. "I join my brother Canadian bishops in apologizing.”

According to a 2015 report from the Canadian government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission titled “Cultural Genocide,” approximately 150,000 native children were taken from their homes and subjected to abuse, rape and malnutrition at the hands of the Catholic Church in what has been called “cultural genocide.”

The schools – which operated between 1831 and 1996 – were created in order to assimilate Indigenous Children into mainstream Canadian society and were run by several Christian denominations on behalf of the Canadian government. They once again came into the spotlight in 2021 when the remains of 215 children were discovered at the former Indian Residential School in Kamloops in the Western Canadian province of British Columbia.

Although the school closed in 1978, the discovery served to reopen old wounds and once again bring about calls for accountability. Since the discovery at the school in Kamloops, hundreds of similar unmarked graves have been found across Canada.