Pope apologises to Canadians over boarding school abuse

Jyeshtha Shuddha Trutiya/Chaturthi

Canada: Pope Benedict XVI apologised on Wednesday to native Canadians who were physically and sexually abused at church-run boarding schools they were forced to attend.
 
The Pontiff told a group of former students and victims of his "personal anguish" over their suffering, and said he was praying that they would heal.

From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indian children in Canada were forced to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools as part of an effort to assimilate them into white Canadian society.
 
The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse was rampant in the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages.

That legacy of abuse and isolation has been cited by Indian leaders as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations.

The Canadian government has formally apologised and offered billions of dollars in compensation. The Catholic Church itself has paid some $79 million in compensation – but it hadn’t issued any type of institutional regret until Wednesday.

"What we wanted the Pope to say to us was that he was sorry and … that he deeply felt for us," said Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, and himself a victim of abuse at one of the schools. "We heard that very clearly today."

Source: Telegraph

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