The delegation of indigenous representatives, which was to be received by Pope Francis in December to discuss the tragedy of residential schools for indigenous people, announced on Tuesday the postponement of its trip, because of the threat of the Omicron variant.
The trip is postponed to “the first opportunity in 2022,” said members of the delegation, before a trip by the Pope to Canada scheduled for the same year.
“The risk of infection and the unpredictable development of the global situation are too great a threat at this time, especially for elderly delegates and people living in remote communities,” the delegation said in a statement.
The latter includes bishops and three Indigenous organizations – the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the Métis National Council and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.
The country has been shaken for several months by the discovery of more than a thousand children’s graves near former residential schools for indigenous people, institutions where indigenous children were gathered that the government wanted to assimilate.
In October, the Catholic Church, which operated part of its residential schools, issued a formal apology to Indigenous peoples. But many of them are still waiting for Pope Francis to come to Canada to issue a formal apology.
Between the 19th century and the 1990s, some 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly enrolled in 139 such residential schools across the country, where they were cut off from their families, language and culture.
Many of them have been subjected to ill-treatment or sexual abuse, and more than 4,000 have died there, according to a commission of inquiry which had concluded to a true “cultural genocide”.