Justin Trudeau held a private meeting with Pope Francis Monday and requested the Catholic Church apologize for its role in the Indian residential school tragedy.<\/p>\n
Following the meeting at the Vatican, Trudeau indicated Pope Francis would work with the prime minister and Canadian Catholic bishops toward the apology.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe reminded me that his entire life has been dedicated to supporting marginalized people in the world,\u201d Trudeau said, as reported by CTV News.<\/p>\n
In the 19th century, the Canadian government began taking Indian children from their parents and putting them in church-run schools to convert them to Christianity and teach them English.<\/p>\n
The students faced rampant physical and sexual abuse at the schools, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to address their grievances.<\/p>\n
About 150,000 children in all were taken beginning in the late 1800s and lodged in far-away schools. There were about 80 residential schools at the peak of the program in 1931, and many were run by the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
The last school closed in 1996. The commission has demanded the church issue an apology.<\/p>\n
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI expressed \u201csorrow\u201d over the \u201cdeplorable conduct\u201d by some members of the church at the residential schools, but a formal apology has never been made.<\/p>\n
The Anglican Church apologized for its role in the residential school tragedy in 1993 and the United Church did the same in 1998.<\/p>\n
Trudeau, a practicing Catholic, said he issued an invitation to the Pope to visit Canada in the coming years, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.<\/p>\nError, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 10)<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Pontiff looked favorable on request \/ Canada Asks Pope To Apologize For Indian School Tragedy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,1,14],"tags":[77374,47990],"class_list":["post-58928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-general","category-world","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-pope-francis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}