Pope Francis visits Canada on “pilgrimage of penance”

Pope Francis will visit Canada on what he has called a “pilgrimage of penance” to apologize for the mistreatment of indigenous children in residential schools, which were mostly run by Catholics.

He is expected to land in Edmonton, in the western province of Alberta, at 11:20 am MDT Sunday. This will be the first of three stops across Canada, Pope Francis is also going to Quebec City and Iqaluit, which is the capital of the territory of Nunavut. the Pope will depart on Friday

A spokesperson for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), which is planning the trip, told Reuters that the first groups of free tickets for the public were gone in 10 or 20 minutes. Thousands of tickets are being set aside for indigenous people who went to residential schools and survived. Indigenous leaders in Treaty 6, Alberta, where the Pope will stop, have said that they are getting a lot of questions from survivors who want to go.

Between 1881 and 1996, more than 150,000 indigenous children were taken away from their families and put in residential schools. In a system that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide,” many children were starved, hit, and sexually abused.

Even though Canada’s leaders have known since 1907 that a lot of children died at the schools, the issue became more important last year when unmarked graves were found on or near the sites of former residential schools.

As a result of the pressure caused by these discoveries, Pope Francis apologized for the Catholic church’s role in the schools during a visit by indigenous delegates to the Vatican earlier this year.

Now, he is coming to Canada to apologize. But survivors and leaders of the native peoples have told Reuters that they want more than just an apology. Many people have asked for money, the return of indigenous artifacts, the release of school records, help with extraditing an accused abuser, and the rescinding of a papal bull, or edict, from the 15th century, that justified the colonial dispossession of indigenous people.