Pope calls Canada indigenous abuse ‘genocide’, talks of stepping aside now he’s 85

Pope Francis said on Saturday that the decades-long abuse of Indigenous schoolchildren across Canada amounted to “genocide”, as he warned upon his return to Rome that he needed to slow down his travel pace – or resign.

During his six-day “penitential pilgrimage” across Canada this week, the 85-year-old religious leader offered a historic apology to the First Nations, Metis and Inuit people, who have been waiting for years for such an acknowledgement from the head of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics.

Aboard the papal plane, he used the word “genocide” to describe the decades of maltreatment and sexual abuse against Canada’s Indigenous children, who were wrenched from their families and cultures to attend state schools run by the Church.

“I didn’t say the word (in Canada) because it didn’t come to my mind, but I did describe the genocide. And I asked for forgiveness for this process which was genocide,” he told reporters.

Although Francis’s unprecedented apology was mostly welcomed across Canada, from Western Alberta to Quebec and the far north, many survivors said much more needed to be done for reconciliation.

The pope, who spent much of the trip in a wheelchair due to knee pain, told reporters his international trips were numbered.