"We're All Pained": Canada Indigenous Leaders Dismiss Pope Remarks

The pope said that he was pained by the news about the former school for indigenous students but stopped short of issuing a direct apology.

Indigenous leaders and school survivors on Sunday dismissed Pope Francis' expressions of pain at the discovery of 215 children's remains at a former Catholic residential school in Canada, saying the church needed to do much more. In his weekly blessing in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, Francis said he was pained by the news about the former school for indigenous students and called for respect for the rights and cultures of native peoples. But he stopped short of the direct apology some Canadians had demanded. "We're all pained and saddened. Who isn't? This is a worldwide travesty," Chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations in Saskatchewan, Bobby Cameron, told Reuters. "How hard is it for the Pope to say: 'I'm very sorry for the way our organization treated the First Nations people, the First Nations students during those times, we are sorry, we pray.'"