Canada blames mass graves on the Vatican; “Pope must apologize”
The Canadian prime minister has blamed the Catholic Church of the Vatican for finding mass graves of children in boarding schools, saying the pope should personally apologize to indigenous people of the country.
Instead of apologizing on behalf of the federal government, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed the Vatican for indigenous people whose children had been victims of the racist crime of boarding schools in recent years.
According to Reuters, Trudeau has asked Pope Francis to travel to Canada in person and formally apologize for the role of the Catholic Church in running boarding schools where mass graves of Native Canadian children have been found.
“I spoke directly to Pope Francis to put pressure on him not only to apologize but to apologize to Native Canadians on Canadian soil,” he told a news conference in Ottawa.
According to the report, the Prime Minister of Canada also added: “I know that the leaders of the Catholic Church are examining the situation and actively interacting on the next steps that need to be taken.”
Canadian media have twice reported the discovery of mass graves in recent weeks that have buried nearly 1,000 Indigenous Canadian children.
Between 1883 and 1996, about 150,000 Buddhist children were forcibly separated from their families and sent to boarding schools established by the Catholic Church, with the primary goal of alienating these children from Canadian indigenous communities and preventing the spread of the language. And their maternal traditions and upbringing were imposed.
In the latest incident, the Canadian National Post reported Thursday morning that hundreds of unregistered graves had been discovered in Saskatchewan, possibly containing the bodies of Native Canadian children.
One month earlier, the bodies of at least 215 indigenous children, some about three years old, were found on the grounds of a Catholic boarding school in British Columbia.
