Pope Francis Says Church-Run Schools for Indigenous Children in Canada Practiced Genocide, #Pope #Francis #ChurchRun #Schools #Indigenous #Children #Canada #Practiced #Genocide Welcome to O L A S M E D I A TV N E W S, This is what we have for you today:
ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT—Pope Francis said Canada’s historical system of residential schools for indigenous children, many of which were run by Catholic organizations, amounted to a form of genocide.
“To take away children and change their culture, change their thinking, change their traditions and change a race, let’s say, an entire culture…It’s true, it was genocide,” the pope told reporters accompanying him on his flight to Rome late Friday after six days in Canada.
During his visit, the pope repeatedly apologized for Catholics’ role in managing the residential schools, which a 2015 report funded by the Canadian government described as a system of cultural genocide. The pope didn’t use the term “genocide” in his public remarks in Canada. He told reporters aboard the flight that this was only because the word “didn’t come to mind. But what I described was genocide.”
For more than a century, government-sponsored residential schools in Canada enrolled indigenous children—often by force—to assimilate them to white culture. Many students were also * or physically abused. The last schools closed in the 1990s.
The pope’s trip to Canada, which was extraordinary in being designed principally for the purpose of apologizing, came at the request of indigenous leaders and the Canadian government, who also called on him to take a number of other concrete steps. Among their demands was that he explicitly rescind the Doctrine of Discovery, based on a series of 15th-century papal decrees that were used to justify European colonialism in Africa and the Americas. The pope didn’t mention the topic during his time in Canada.
“This doctrine of colonization is truly bad, unjust,” the pope said in response to a reporter on Friday. “This mentality that we are superior and these indigenous people don’t count, this is grave. We need to work on what you say, go back and clean up the harm that was done.”
According to the principal spokesman for the papal visit, the Vatican is collaborating with the Canadian bishops to prepare a statement renouncing the doctrine.
Pope Francis, who has been using a wheelchair since early May on account of a torn ligament and fracture in his right knee, sat throughout the 40-minute in-flight press conference. The 85-year-old pope said the trip had been a test of his ability to travel, after canceling a trip to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo planned for earlier this month.
“I don’t think I can travel at the same pace as before. I think at my age, with this limitation, I should spare myself a bit so as to be able to serve the church,” the pope said. His program in Canada was unusually light by his previous standards, with no more than two public events each day.
The pope said he still intends to visit the two African countries at unspecified dates, as well as Kazakhstan for a conference of religious leaders in mid-September. He had earlier said that the Kazakhstan event could be an occasion to meet with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, whom the pope has criticized for his support of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The pope on Friday also reiterated his desire to visit Kyiv but said he did not know when.
Pope Francis raised the possibility that his ailments could eventually prompt him to retire but said he wasn’t ready to do so yet. “The door [to retirement] is open, it’s one of the normal options,” he said. “But up till now I have not knocked on that door.”
Write to Francis X. Rocca at francis.rocca@wsj.com
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