Mass graves in Canada: Pope ignores apology for dead children

Pope Francis remembers indigenous children killed in Canada. However, the Pope refrained from apologizing. Among other things, they demand the survivors of 215 victims.

Pope Francis thinks of 215 dead children discovered on the grounds of a former Catholic school in Canada, but refrains from apologizing. He feels close to the victims, said the Pope in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. Politics and the Church must clean up this sad story so that healing can be possible. However, the Pope defied a request for pardon sought by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “I got scary news from Canada,” said the head of the Catholic Church after the traditional Angelus prayer.

“These difficult moments are a strong call to distance ourselves from the colonial model and ideological colony of today and to walk shoulder to shoulder in dialogue, respect and recognition of cultural rights and values,” Francis said.

Canada and Indigenous Peoples Apologize

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has previously called on the Catholic Church to take responsibility for its role as the governing body of these schools. Rosanne Casimir, head of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in the Western Province of British Columbia, also called on the Vatican to make a public apology. “We want an apology – a public apology, not only to us, but to the rest of the world,” she was quoted by the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. “We blame the Catholic Church for this.”

UN human rights experts issued a statement calling on the Canadian government and the Vatican to launch a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding the children’s deaths and whoever was responsible. Experts called boarding schools “heinous crimes” and human rights violations. It would be “simply unimaginable” if the Canadian state and the Vatican let those responsible go free and do not take care of comprehensive compensation.

An investigation into all such facilities in Canada is necessary to investigate allegations of torture and abuse, and possibly to hold still-living perpetrators accountable.

The mass grave was discovered in late May near the town of Kamloops, British Columbia. It was found on the grounds of Kamloops Residential School, a type of re-education camp for Native Canadian children that was in operation between 1890 and 1978. It is not yet known when and by whom the children died. Some of them were only three years old.