A Vancouver archbishop says that apologies by local church figures for the institution’s role in Canada’s residential schools “might not be enough” in the absence of a formal apology from the pope. But he hopes they will be “accepted as gestures of goodwill.”
Snatched up in cattle carts and by bus, tens of thousands of indigenous children taken to Canadian residential schools run mostly by the Catholic Church lived a "paramilitary" lifestyle, waking early to pray, waiting rigidly in lines and enduring regular beatings, survivors said.
Pope Francis expressed his "pain" on Sunday over the discovery of the remains of 215 children in a mass grave at a former indigenous boarding school in Canada run by the Church.