Glob­al pil­grim­ages by popes are usu­al­ly chore­o­graphed to pro­file a larg­er-than-life reli­gious fig­ure, greet­ed by enor­mous crowds, and cel­e­brat­ing such fes­ti­vals as World Youth Day which brings togeth­er thou­sands of whole­some teenagers.

The “pen­i­ten­tial jour­ney” of Pope Fran­cis to Cana­da began Mon­day at Maskwacîs, a remote locale in Alber­ta, host­ed by Indige­nous Cana­di­ans. The pon­tiff recit­ed the Lord’s Prayer but did not say Mass. Fran­cis only briefly left his wheel­chair but was on a mis­sion to walk humbly before Abo­rig­i­nal First Nations.

He was address­ing what has become a shame for the Church and Cana­da, the long­time (1881–1996) tak­ing of 150,000 chil­dren from their native schools and deposit­ing them in res­i­den­tial schools.

The kids were beat­en for speak­ing their native lan­guages, sub­ject to sex­u­al abuse, with thou­sands suc­cumb­ing to dis­ease and despair.

Two-thirds of the schools were run by Roman Catholic reli­gious orders.

The sep­a­ra­tion of kids from cul­ture was “cat­a­stroph­ic,” said Pope Fran­cis, aimed at the “cul­tur­al destruc­tion of Indige­nous peoples.”

He apol­o­gized at the Vat­i­can in April but is mak­ing the jour­ney to Cana­da despite age (eighty-five) and phys­i­cal infirmity.

“I humbly beg for­give­ness for the evil com­mit­ted by so many Chris­tians against the Indige­nous peo­ples,” said Pope Fran­cis, speak­ing at the site of what was once one of the largest res­i­den­tial schools in the country.

“I am so sor­ry,” he added. “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 per­mit­ted by the gov­ern­ments of that time, which cul­mi­nat­ed in the sys­tem of res­i­den­tial schools.”

With his state­ments, the Pope answered a 2015 rec­om­men­da­tion by Canada’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion, which called for account­abil­i­ty and apol­o­gy for the “spir­i­tu­al, cul­tur­al, emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse of First Nations, Inu­it and Metis chil­dren from Catholic-run res­i­den­tial schools.”

An apol­o­gy for the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment was deliv­ered by then-Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er, a Con­ser­v­a­tive from Alberta.

“The treat­ment of chil­dren in Indi­an res­i­den­tial schools is a sad chap­ter in our his­to­ry,” Harp­er told par­lia­ment. “Today we rec­og­nize that this pol­i­cy of assim­i­la­tion was wrong, caused great harm, and has no place in our country.”

There came, two years ago, a dis­cov­ery that seared Canada’s nation­al con­scious­ness. The Kam­loops Indi­an Res­i­den­tial School oper­at­ed just out­side the British Colum­bia city from 1881 to 1969, when it was tak­en over from the Church by the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment and turned into a day school.

The build­ing still stands. In June of 2021, anthro­pol­o­gist Sarah Bealieu sur­veyed the grounds with ground-pen­e­trat­ing radar, which detect­ed the pres­ence of an esti­mat­ed 205 unmarked graves.

Assim­i­la­tion was adver­tised as a strat­e­gy for bring­ing cul­ture and faith to “unciv­i­lized” chil­dren from iso­lat­ed native villages.

It was wide­ly accept­ed, school admin­is­tra­tors were hon­ored, priests and nuns posed with class­es of new­ly scrubbed pupils.

In remarks Mon­day, Fran­cis not­ed the real­i­ty of cul­tur­al genocide.

“What our Chris­t­ian faith tells us is that this was a dis­as­trous error, incom­pat­i­ble with the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” said the pontiff.

“It is painful to think of how the firm soil of val­ues, lan­guage and cul­ture that made up the authen­tic iden­ti­ties of your peo­ples was erased, and that you have con­tin­ued to pay the price for this. In the face of this deplorable evil, the Church kneels before God and implores His for­give­ness for the sins of her children.”

Wit­ness­ing his remarks was Canada’s Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al Mary Simon, an Inuk born in north­ern Que­bec and the first Indige­nous per­son to hold the post as Queen Elizabeth’s cer­e­mo­ni­al chief of state in Canada.

With bang­ing drums and chants, and a parade of chiefs and elders, Indige­nous peo­ples wel­comed Pope Fran­cis and even put a head­dress on him. The Pope came to Cana­da bear­ing a pair of moc­casins giv­en him at a Vat­i­can meet­ing in April with Abo­rig­i­nal First Nations lead­ers. He returned them to Marie-Anne Day Walk­er Pel­leti­er, a retire Okamese First Nations activist from Saskatchewan.

Sur­vivors of the res­i­den­tial schools voiced grat­i­tude for the Pope’s remarks but regrets that the Church did not speak up more force­ful­ly and soon­er. Scars remain that can­not be healed even in an apol­o­gy deliv­ered on Cana­di­an soil.

Pope Fran­cis attached great impor­tance to his pen­i­ten­tial jour­ney. Due to ill health he has already can­celed two trips abroad this summer.

But he is spend­ing five days in Cana­da, seek­ing to heal decades of hurt.