Pope apologises for 'evil' of Canadian indigenous schools

MASKWACIS (Alberta) • Pope Francis apologised to Canada's native people on their land for the Church's role in schools where indigenous children were abused, calling their forced cultural assimilation a "deplorable evil" and "disastrous error".

Speaking near the site of two former schools in Maskwacis, Alberta on Monday, the Pope apologised for Christian support of the "colonising mentality" of the times and called for a serious investigation of the schools to help survivors and descendants heal.

"With shame and unambiguously, I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the indigenous peoples," said Pope Francis, who arrived and left in a wheelchair due to a fractured knee.

The address to the First Nations, Metis and Inuit people was the first apology on Canadian soil by the Pope as part of a tour to heal deep wounds that rose to the fore after the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools last year.

The 85-year-old Pope had promised such a tour to indigenous delegations that visited him earlier this year at the Vatican, where he made an initial apology.

Indigenous leaders wearing eagle-feather war headdresses greeted him as a fellow chief, welcoming him with chanting, beating of drums, dancing and war songs.

"I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry," Pope Francis said.

Between 1881 and 1996, more than 150,000 indigenous children were separated from their families and brought to residential schools. Many were starved, beaten for speaking native languages, and sexually abused in a system Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission called "cultural genocide".

"I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the Church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools," the Pope said.

Most of the schools were run for the government by Roman Catholic religious orders of priests and nuns.

REUTERS