Pope Francis (L) and Governor General of Canada Mary Simon (C)
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)The Canadian government has made clear Pope Francis’ apology to Indigenous people for decades of abuse suffered in Church-run residential schools did not go far enough.
The Pontiff earlier this week issued a historic apology for the Church’s role in running residential schools for Indigenous children in which abuse was rife.
But, reacting to the apology, the Government echoed criticisms of some survivors that the Pope’s apology made no reference to sexual abuse suffered by children in the schools.
The reaction came as Pope Francis arrived in Quebec City for meetings with Canada’s Governor General, Mary Simon, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the second leg of his week-long trip to Canada.
More than 150,000 native children in Canada were forced to attend government-funded Christian schools from the 19th century until the 1970s.
While the Pope apologised for the “evil” of the school system, he said it was “promoted by the governmental authorities at the time" as part of a policy of assimilation.
Responding to criticism on Wednesday, the Pope added that "local Catholic institutions had a part" in implementing that policy.
Mr Trudeau, a Catholic whose father was prime minister while the last residential schools were in operation, insisted that the Catholic Church as an institution bore blame and needed to do more.
He said Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 had called for a papal apology to be delivered on Canadian soil.
He said that Pope Francis’s visit "would not have been possible without the courage and perseverance" of survivors who travelled to the Vatican last spring to press their case for an apology.
"Apologies for the role that the Roman Catholic Church, as an institution, played in the mistreatment on the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical and sexual abuse that Indigenous children suffered in residential schools run by the church," Mr Trudeau said.
The Canadian government issued a formal apology for the schools in 2008, calling them a sad chapter in Canadian history.
As part of a settlement involving the government, churches and the approximately 90,000 surviving students, Canada paid reparations that amounted to billions of dollars being transferred to Indigenous communities.
Both the Pope and Mr Trudeau said the visit was a beginning and that reconciliation was the duty of everyone.
“It’s our responsibility to see our differences not as an obstacle but as an occasion to learn, to better understand one another and to move to action,” said Mr Trudeau.
