Pope Francis asks for forgiveness for the abuses committed by the Church

With a serious face, to the sound of a traditional Native American song, Pope Francis arrives at the cemetery of the Ermineskin tribe (Canada). As far as the eye can see, the anonymous graves of hundreds of children who died of abuse in one of the many horror boarding schools run by the Catholic Church. A silent prayer, before a long procession, a symbol of penance. In front of a crowd of natives, the pope came to ask forgiveness. “I have come to your lands to tell you my grief in person, to implore God’s forgiveness, healing and reconciliation. To tell you that I am with you. To pray with you, and for you“, did he declare.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Canadian state set up a program of forced assimilation for the natives. Torn from their families, the children are forcibly educated in Catholic establishments. They no longer have the right to speak their language, must renounce their identity. Violence, rape and disease are commonplace. “Here, when we were punished, we had to clean the stairs with a toothbrush“, recalls Rose Miller, survivor of the Catholic boarding school in Khamloops. At least 6,000 students are said to have died in these boarding schools. To justify these disappearances, the nuns said that the children had fled. The natives demanded an apology from the Pope, so his visit is an important moment.”We finally feel a sense of justice. This is the condition for talking about reconciliation“, says Wilton Littlechild, a survivor of a Catholic boarding school.