Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the pope should apologize to indigenous people in Canada for the children forced into church-run schools in the nation, adding he should do it on Canadian soil.
In remarks to reporters on Friday, the prime minister said he spoke to Pope Francis and urged him to visit the nation. This comes one day after a tribal leader announced the discovery of at least 600 buried bodies at the Marieval Indian Residential School site in Saskatchewan, which was operated by the Catholic Church.
“I have spoken personally directly with His Holiness, Pope Francis, to impress upon him how important it is not just that he makes an apology but that he makes an apology to indigenous Canadians on Canadian soil,” he said.
“I know that the Catholic Church leadership is looking and very actively engaged in what next steps can be taken,” Trudeau added.
MORE THAN 600 BODIES FOUND AT CANADA CATHOLIC INDIGENOUS SCHOOL, TRIBAL LEADER SAYS
Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme told the Associated Press ground-penetrating radar technology found 751 “hits” when surveying the area. Accounting for a possible margin of error, he estimated at least 600 people had been buried in the area, telling the outlet that while the graves had once been marked, the markers were moved at some point.
Delorme also expressed a desire for the pope to apologize, calling the possible action “one stage in the way of a healing journey.”
In May, the remains of over 200 children were found at a similar indigenous school in British Columbia, Canada, with some of the found children being buried as young as 3 years old.
“I join with the Catholic Church in Canada in expressing closeness to the Canadian people traumatized by the shocking news,” Pope Francis said without issuing an explicit apology. “This sad discovery increases the awareness of the sorrows and sufferings of the past.”
Starting in 1883, thousands of indigenous children were sent to state-funded, church-run residential schools. Those who attended such schools and are still living today said they experienced abuse and forced assimilation.
“The nuns were very mean to us,” Florence Sparvier, an 80-year-old woman who said she attended Marieval Indian Residential School, told the Associated Press. “We had to learn how to be Roman Catholic. We couldn’t say our own little blessings.”
“We learned how to not like who we were,” she added. “That has gone on, and it’s still going on.”
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The last indigenous residential school in Canada closed its doors in 1996.
“This was an incredibly harmful government policy that was Canada’s reality for many, many decades, and Canadians today are horrified and ashamed of how our country behaved,” Trudeau said on Thursday. “It was a policy that ripped kids from their homes, from their communities, from their culture and their language and forced assimilation upon them.”
