The pope made the comment while flying back to Rome after a week\u002Dlong trip to Canada
“I condemned this, taking children away and trying to change their culture, their minds, change their traditions, a race, an entire culture,” the pope added.Article content
Between 1881 and 1996 more than 150,000 indigenous children were separated from their families and brought to residential schools. Many children were starved, beaten and sexually abused in a system that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide.” The schools were run for the governments by religious groups, most of them Catholic priests and nuns.
“Yes, genocide is a technical word but I did not use it because I did not think of it, but I described …. yes, it is a genocide, yes, yes, clearly. You can say that I said it was a genocide,” he said. Last Monday, Francis visited the town of Maskwacis, site of two former residential schools, where he apologized and called forced assimilation “evil” and a “disastrous error.”Share this article in your social network
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