ON THE PAPAL AIRCRAFT (Reuters) – Pope Francis said on Saturday that what happened in residential schools that the Roman Catholic and other Christian Churches ran to forcibly assimilate Canada’s indigenous children was genocide. The pope made the comment while returning to Rome after a week-long trip to Canada, where he delivered a historic apology for the Church’s role in politics. He was asked by an Indigenous Canadian journalist on the plane why he did not use the word genocide during the trip and whether he would accept that members of the Church were involved in the genocide. “It’s true that I didn’t use the word because I didn’t think of it. But I described genocide. I apologized, I asked forgiveness for this activity, which was genocide,” Francis said. “I condemned this, taking the children away and trying to change their culture, their minds, change their traditions, a tribe, an entire culture,” the Pope added. Between 1881 and 1996 more than 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families and placed in residential schools. Many children were starved, beaten and sexually abused in a system Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide.” Schools were run for the governments by religious groups, most of whom were Catholic priests and nuns. “Yes, genocide is a technical word but I didn’t use it because I didn’t think about it, but I described it… yes, it is genocide, yes, yes, clearly. You can say I said it was a genocide,” he said. Last Monday, Francis visited the town of Maskwacis, home to two former residential schools, where he apologized and called forced assimilation “evil” and a “catastrophic mistake.” He also apologized for the Christian support of the “colonial mentality” of the times. (Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Frances Kerry)
