Pope Francis is currently visiting Canada and on his first day of his visit, focussed on addressing decades of abuse at Catholic run residential schools. He apologized for this evil inflicted on the native people of Canada.
The Pope’s plea for forgiveness met with an applause from the crowd. Several hundred people attended the meeting including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon, Canada’s first indigenous governor general.
The Pope will hold a mass at Edmonton and then head to an important pilgrimage site, the Lac Sainte Anne. He will visit Quebec from July 27 to 29 and end his trip in Iqaluit, capital of the northern territory of Nunavut and home to the largest Inuit population in Canada. He will again meet with former residential school students and then return to Italy.
