'Feel shame, pain': Pope Francis seeks forgiveness from indigenous People of Canada

Francis also vowed to visit Canada, where he would be able to demonstrate "my closeness" as part of a healing and reconciliation process.

Pope Francis on Friday apologised for the Roman Catholic Church's participation in a system of Canadian boarding schools that molested Indigenous children for 100 years, following the discovery last year of traces of unmarked graves containing the bones of dozens of youngsters.

"I feel shame and grief," the Pope remarked of the "heinous" abuses. "I beg God's pardon, and I join the Canadian bishops in apologising." Francis also vowed to visit Canada, where he would be able to demonstrate "my closeness" as part of a healing and reconciliation process.

Francis delivered his remarks at an audience at the Apostolic Palace with 62 delegates from Canada's three major Indigenous communities, who had journeyed to the Vatican to seek his apologies. This was the first apology from a pope to the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and it reversed Francis' previous attitude.

From the 1880s through the 1990s, the Canadian government operated a system of compulsory boarding schools, which a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission described as "cultural genocide." The Catholic Church managed over 70% of the schools in the system.

Around 150,000 Indigenous children were removed from their families and put to these residential schools, where physical and sexual abuse, as well as neglect and sickness, were common.