Pope Francis on Monday, July 25 will begin a long-sought act of reconciliation in Canada, visiting the site of a former residential school on the first full day of a trip that he has said will begin and end with penitence.
The Pope is expected to apologize for the Catholic Church’s involvement in a school system that forced Indigenous children from their parents and tried to assimilate them, often brutally, into Euro-Christian society.
Francis’s visit is the result of years of Indigenous requests for an official acknowledgment from the church. The trip is a major break from the norms of papal overseas travel, on which celebration and evangelization tend to be the central goals.
In Canada, at least 150,000 Indigenous children were forced into the residential school system, which was notorious for poor conditions. Malnutrition was rampant, as was physical and sexual abuse, and children died at rates several times above the national norm.
In 1966, a supervisor at the school was dismissed for writing to the federal department of Indian Affairs chief superintendent of education to report that priests were whipping girls with straps on their bare bottoms. She included the testimony of two students.
At least 15 children died or went missing at the Ermineskin School, according to the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, in the course of its history.
Victor Buffalo was 7 years old and spoke no English when he was sent to the Ermineskin School. He told The Washington Post that school administrators withheld food as punishment and whipped him frequently for speaking his native Cree.
Buffalo said that his relationship with his parents, who also attended residential schools, was strained for many decades after he left the school in 1961.
