Pope Francis closed this Friday in Iqaluit, in northern Canada, the six-day visit to the North American country that was focused on his requests for forgiveness to the local indigenous people for the role of Christians in the abuses of all kinds committed in the boarding schools for natives that worked for almost the entire 20th century.
The pontiff began his return from the northern Canadian city and will travel 5,667 kilometers in 7 hours before landing at the Italian capital’s Fiumicino airport at 7:50 local time (2:50 in Argentina).
With his visit to the city of 7,740 inhabitants, the Pope ended a visit that had begun on Sunday in Edmonton and that from the beginning was marked by repeated requests for forgiveness to the local indigenous people for the role of Christians and Church institutions Catholic in the boarding schools that operated in Canada to westernize indigenous children from 1883 to 1996.
During the trip, helped in many sections by a wheelchair, Francisco visited three representative cities of the three indigenous peoples of the country: Edmonton, predominantly First Nations; Quebec, with a Métis majority and finally Iqaluit, territory of the Inuit.
In his last speech in Canada, just 300 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, the Pope acknowledged once again “the indignation and shame” caused by the role of some members of the Church in the operation of the 139 residential schools that established by the Government of Canada and which it had already defined as an experience that led to “cultural destruction”.
“Even today, also here, I would like to tell you that I am very sorry and I want to apologize for the evil committed by not a few Catholics who in those schools contributed to policies of cultural assimilation and disengagement,” he told a group of Inuit elders and youth.
“How bad it is to break the ties between parents and children, to hurt the dearest affections, to hurt and scandalize the little ones!” He said about the school policy that was financed by the Canadian State and for which, according to estimates officials, about 150,000 children passed without the consent of their parents.
In his ninth and final speech, the pontiff lamented the current situation with “a world that seems to be sinking ever lower amidst scandals, wars, deceit, injustice, destruction of the environment, indifference towards the weakest, disappointments for part of those who should lead by example”.
Francis began his activities this Friday with a private meeting with Canadian Jesuits and then received indigenous people at the local archbishopric and asked them to feel “part of their family.”
“I dare to say, if you allow me, that now, in a certain sense, I also feel part of your family, and I feel honored,” the Pope said today when receiving a group of indigenous people from the Quebec archbishopric. country.
The Pope told the natives that he will return “much more enriched.”
“Because I carry in my heart the incomparable treasure made of people and towns that have marked me; of faces, smiles and words that remain inside me; of stories and places that I will not be able to forget; of sounds, colors and emotions that vibrate strongly in me,” he explained.
“I can really say that, during my visit, it was their realities, the indigenous realities of this land, that visited my soul; they entered me and will always accompany me,” said Jorge Bergoglio, who during his tour visited an indigenous cemetery, participated of a pilgrimage to a miraculous lake and apologized for the role of Christians in the boarding school system that suffered some 150,000 children, among other gestures to the natives.
“I have come to Canada as a friend to meet you, to see, hear, learn and appreciate how the indigenous peoples of this country live. I have come as a brother, to discover firsthand the fruits, good and bad, produced by the members of the local Catholic family over the years,” he deepened.
Although the 139 boarding schools were instituted by the State, some 40 centers were managed by institutions linked to Christianity and Catholicism.
“I have come with a penitential spirit, to express the pain that I carry in my heart for the evil that not a few Catholics caused them by supporting oppressive and unjust policies,” the Pope recalled in his speech this Friday.
“I have come as a pilgrim, with my limited physical possibilities, to take new steps forward with you and for you; so that the search for truth continues, so that progress is made in promoting paths of healing and reconciliation, so that continue to sow hope in future generations of indigenous and non-indigenous people, who wish to live together fraternally, in harmony,” he called.
The request for forgiveness for what the Pope considered the “disastrous” experience of boarding schools, which according to Bergoglio caused a “cultural destruction” of native customs, is the common thread of the six-day visit to Canada that Francis began on Sunday .
Some of the boarding schools arranged throughout the country, designed and financed by the Canadian State, were managed by Catholic and Christian institutions, for which the survivors claimed in 2015 the need for a papal apology in Canada that the Pope finally fulfilled this week.
In addition to the request for forgiveness to the indigenous people, repeated in his meetings with each of the peoples, the Pope’s agenda was crossed by the demands of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In the middle of the tour, the Pope received the Canadian government’s demand that the Vatican restore a series of indigenous objects that the Holy See has in its museums for more than a century and that, according to what Télam learned from official sources, the Vatican alleges which were a gift from the missionaries to the then Pope Pius XI.
