Pope Francis said on Saturday that 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 pace of travel — or resign.
During his six-day “penitential pilgrimage” across Canada this week, the 85-year-old pope 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 Roman Catholics.
