Pope says listening to Canadian boarding school survivors’ pain was like being slapped

Pope Francis said on Wednesday (3) that felt the pain From survivors of the system in boarding schools of Canada “as slaps” and what the Catholic Church needsago your responsibilityin by the institutions what abused in children and tried to erase indigenous cultures.

O pope indelivered his address at the weekly general audience to his trip last week to Canadaonin did a historical order in inapologies for the role of the Church in boarding schools, what operated between 1870 and 1996.

Most in 150,000 indigenous children were separated in their families and taken to boarding schools educational. OrinCatholic nuns administered most inthem under the policy in assimilation of successive sugarcane governmentsinthese.

Children were beaten for speaking their native languages ​​and many were sexually abused in a system what the commission in truein and reconciliation of Canada called in “cultural genocide”.

O pope found survivors indigenous people throughout the trip and, on the last day, survivors seniors in boarding schools in Iqaluit, capital of the isolated arctic territory in Nunavut, told their stories in athe private meeting.

“I guarantee what in these meetings, especially in the last one, I had what feel the pain inthese people, as slaps, as they perinram (so much), as the elderly perinwere their children and did not know wherein stopped because of inthis policy in assimilation,” Francis said in off-the-cuff remarks.

“He was a very painful moment, but we had what face, we have what face our mistakes and our sins,” he said.