ABOARD PLANE: Pope Francis left Rome on Sunday for Canada for a chance to personally apologise to Indigenous survivors of abuse committed over a span of decades at residential schools run by the Catholic Church.

The head of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics will be met at Edmonton’s international airport by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Pope’s plane took off from Rome shortly after 9am local time.

The 10-hour flight constitutes the longest since 2019 for the 85-year-old pope, who has been suffering from knee pain that has forced him to use a cane or wheelchair in recent outings.

The pope was in a wheelchair on Sunday and used a lifting platform to board the plane, a correspondent accompanying him said.

Pope Francis’ Canada visit is primarily to apologise to survivors for the Church’s role in the scandal that a national truth and reconciliation commission has called “cultural genocide”.

Before he left, the pope said on Twitter he was making a “penitential pilgrimage” that “might contribute to the journey of reconciliation already undertaken”. He will be joined on the visit by his diplomacy chief, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s second most senior official.

From the late 1800s to the 1990s, Canada’s government sent about 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children into 139 residential schools run by the Church, where they were cut off from their families, language and culture. Many were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers.

Thousands of children are believed to have died of disease, malnutrition or neglect.

Since May 2021, more than 1,300 unmarked graves have been discovered at the sites of the former schools.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2022