Pope Arrives In Canada To Deliver Historic Apology

MASKWACIS, Alberta (AP) – Pope Francis has arrived at the site of a former Indigenous residential school to deliver a long-awaited apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s policy of forcibly assimilating Native peoples into Christian society that led to generations of trauma and abuse.

Francis is to pray at a cemetery near the Ermineskin Indian Residential School, now largely torn down, and then deliver remarks to school survivors, their families and other community members who gathered under a drizzling rain for the historic apology.

Thousands of survivors, Indigenous elders and their family members are attending.