His pleas for forgiveness evoked strong emotions for many but fell short of what some survivors and indigenous leaders hoped for. The pope on Monday traveled to the Alberta town of Maskwacis, the site of two former schools, and issued a historic apology that called the Church’s role in the schools, and the forced cultural assimilation they attempted, a “deplorable evil” and “disastrous error.” Those staying at the island’s lone hotel, the Greyfield Inn, where rooms start at 865 per night, arrive via private ferry from Amelia Island, just south of the Florida-Georgia border. “I don’t have many more years to live, so I want to make sure my wife and children are happier in the future,” Tautu said.Īfter meeting with school survivors in Iqaluit, Francis will watch a public program featuring Inuit traditions such as throat singing and drum dancing, and deliver his last formal remarks on the trip.įrancis is scheduled to leave Canada for Rome at 6:15 p.m. Tautu, part of a small group that will greet the Pope at the Iqaluit airport, said he turned to alcohol to deal with his trauma and mistreated his children.

“Hopefully, our children will never ever receive this kind of treatment like we did when we were little kids.” “I want to tell him that his apology is accepted and from this point on we will start healing and take our life back,” said Andre Tautu, 79, who said he was sexually abused in the church and elsewhere by Catholic clergy in Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut. The children were beaten for speaking their native languages and many sexually abused in a system Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide.” Catholic religious orders ran most of the schools under successive Canadian governments’ policy of assimilation.

Last stop inn