Cindy Wooden

The planned destruction of the families, languages, cultures and traditions of the Indigenous communities of Canada through the residential school system was “genocide,” Pope Francis said.

On a stage designed to evoke a qammaq — a traditional Inuit summer home built of whale ribs, sod and stone — Pope Francis again apologized to the Indigenous communities of Canada for Catholics’ complicity in breaking up their families and suppressing their languages.

In a British-built fort on the highest hill in Quebec City, Pope Francis spoke to Canadian government and cultural leaders about the never-ending challenge of multiculturalism.

Pope Francis joined Indigenous pilgrims at a lake known for miraculous healings and encouraged them to lay their burdens on the shore.

While presented as missionary work, the operation of residential schools by Catholics in Canada was actually an attempt to impose European culture on Canada’s Indigenous people, Pope Francis said.

On the treaty land of the Ermineskin Cree Nation, Samson Cree Nation, Louis Bull Tribe and the Montana First Nation, near the former site of one of Canada’s largest residential schools, Pope Francis said, “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.”