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,” the Pope Francis told reporters on the papal flight from Iqaluit to Rome on Friday.
Over the last week, the Pope visited Edmonton, Quebec City and Iqaluit on a “penitential pilgrimage” of healing, reconciliation and hope between the Catholic Church and Indigenous people.
While
