Thought I'd bump this thread, as the Pope is in Canada and made his apology today.
https://globalnews.ca/news/9013013/p...-canada-day-2/
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Tears streamed down the faces of Indigenous elders and survivors of residential schools as Pope Francis stood before them and begged forgiveness for the “deplorable evil” committed by the Roman Catholic Church.
 Francis, at his first public appearance in Canada in Maskwacis, Alta., said he was sorry the church took part in the cultural destruction and forced assimilation of Indigenous people.
“In the face of this deplorable evil, the church kneels before God and implores his forgiveness for the sins of her children. I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples,” Francis said Monday through a translator at the community’s powwow grounds.
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Others sat in contemplation with their eyes closed when the pontiff said the actions of the church were a “disastrous error incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Francis asked for forgiveness, in particular, for “the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities co-operated, 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.”
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He said begging forgiveness is the first step and there must be a serious investigation into what took place. He also called the overall effects of the policies linked to residential schools “catastrophic.”
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Following his apology, Francis returned a pair of moccasins to Marie-Anne Day Walker-Pelletier, a retired chief of Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan.
She had given the children’s moccasins to the Pope when an Indigenous delegation visited Rome earlier this year.
They were meant to represent children who never came home from residential schools and she had told the pontiff she expected him to return them when he came to apologize on Canadian soil.
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Its a start, but in a journey of a thousand steps, this isn't even 10% of the way to where things need to go.
Beyond things like returning artifacts, there needs to be some significant compensation for the victims. And an act of public reconciliation action by the church.