Pope Francis has appointed Slovenian Vatican diplomat Ivan Zurkovic as his new ambassador to Canada. The Vatican announced this on Saturday. Churches in Canada have been under pressure after the bodies of 215 children were found.
So far, 68-year-old Jurkovic has been a permanent observer of the Holy See at the United Nations and its specialized agencies in Geneva, the World Trade Organization and the Holy See’s representative at the International Organization for Migration.
Church in Canada is under pressure
Churches in the North American country have been under pressure since the discovery of the bodies of 215 children on the grounds of a former boarding school in western Canada, first run by the Catholic Church and later by the Canadian state. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called on Pope Francis to officially apologize for the Catholic Church’s earlier role in Canada’s housekeeping.
The church opened a boarding school in 1890 near the small town of Kamloops in the west of the country. The sons and daughters of indigenous families were mostly forced to live in the facility to introduce them to “Christian civilization”. The boarding school was one of 139 re-education houses in Canada, most of which were under church management. The boarding school was taken over by the state authorities in 1969 and it was closed in 1978.
