Pope says genocide took place at Canada's residential schools

[Spazito]

Pontiff concludes 'penitential pilgrimage' of reconciliation between Catholic Church and Indigenous people

While the word genocide wasn't heard in any of Pope Francis's addresses during a week-long trip to Canada, on his flight back to Rome, he said everything he described about the residential school system and its forced assimilation of Indigenous children amounts to genocide.

"I didn't use the word genocide because it didn't come to mind but I described genocide," Pope Francis told reporters on the papal flight from Iqaluit to Rome on Friday.

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Since 2021, when the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school sites waved across the news, many are calling what had transpired more than cultural genocide. Last year, NDP member of Parliament Leah Gazan made a failed bid for Parliament to recognize the residential school experience as genocide, as she believes it meets the definition of genocide drafted by the United Nations.

The United Nations defines the term as a number of acts committed with the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group" such as killing members, inflicting bodily or mental harm to members, deliberate physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intending to prevent births within a group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

snip

"Yes, it's a technical word, genocide. I didn't use it because it didn't come to mind. But yes, I described it. Yes, it's a genocide."

more

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/pope-francis-residential-schools-genocide-1.6537203

[ampm]

1. It's all showing up now

Yes, it was. children then just like now, are removed from their families and the loss of their identity is generational. The people of Mexico, before the wall, was built lived here, and traveled this country are Native.

[PortTack]

2. While there he begged for forgiveness...yeah right! Go home clean up your pedophile priest issues

Then come back and ask for forgiveness

[Spazito]

3. No argument from me!

I am glad he, belatedly, acknowledged it was genocide because it may make a difference to those still practicing Catholicism and give them a perspective that many have not had to this point, imo.

As to your main point, the Vatican, as a whole, is still refusing to be transparent on the issue of pedophilic priests and the methods used to shield them from being held to account.

[Merlot]

4. So now what?

Words are nice, and apologies are needed. But will there be changes in the church so this doesn't happen again? Reparations? Or was all this just a feel good exercise?

The "better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission" church.

[Spazito]

5. Exactly!

Words alone are empty promises, actions are needed to show they truly understand the meaning of their words, imo.