The Pope arrives in Canada, where he will stay for 6 days, to apologize for the abuse of indigenous children in Catholic boarding schools

ROMA, 24 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Pope has landed this Sunday in the Canadian city of Edmonton, after a flight of ten hours and twenty minutes. The plane that took the Pontiff to Canada took off on time this Sunday at 9:16 a.m. from Rome's Fiumicino airport.

This is the first leg of his six-day trip around the country, where he will apologize to the Inuit, Métis and First Nations peoples for the complicity of the Catholic Church in the boarding school system for Aboriginal children.

The Pontiff has been received at the airport by the highest civil authorities: Mary Simon, the first indigenous woman to hold the position of Governor General of Canada (the representative of Queen Elizabeth of England, equivalent to the head of the Canadian State); and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

However, the official welcome ceremony will take place next Wednesday, July 27, in Quebec. There, Pope Francis will also meet with Trudeau. In addition, there will be the usual and formal meeting with the Civil Authorities, and with the Diplomatic Corps, which will be joined by the representatives of the indigenous populations.

According to the official agenda of the trip, no official act is planned until this Monday, July 25, when the Pontiff will meet with the First Nations, Métis and Inuit indigenous populations in Maskwacis, a community 70 kilometers south of the city. of Edmonton belonging to First Nations, the generic name given to the original populations of Canada.

In the afternoon, at 4:45 p.m., the Pope will go to the Church of the Sacred Heart in Edmonton and hold a Meeting with the Indigenous Populations and with the Members of the Parish Community.

In any case, the Pope's public acts will be limited to one hour on this trip due to "his advanced age" and physical "limitations", as announced by the bishops of that country.

The Pope, who had to postpone his trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan scheduled for July 2 to 7 due to mobility problems in his knee, thus faces his second international trip in 2022.

He is the second pontiff to visit Canada and will make the fourth apostolic trip by a pope to the country. John Paul II toured Canada in September 1984, returned exclusively to meet indigenous people in 1987 at Fort Simpson, and also attended WYD in Toronto in 2002, where the largest crowd in history to that date gathered: nearly 800,000. people.