Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau asks Pope Francis to apologise to indigenous people over church’s abuses

Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada has asked Pope Francis to apologise for the role the Catholic Church played in the decades-long abuse of aboriginal children in the schools it governed.

In the late 19th century about 150,000 children of Canada's native people were placed in residential schools in a government attempt to strip them of their traditional cultures and ancestral languages.

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in a 2015 report that the institutions which were government-funded, were administered by Christian churches which predominantly consisted of the Roman Catholic tradition. 

The tradition which kept children from the First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples far from their parents, amounted to 'cultural genocide'

According to the report, many children were physically and sexually abused in the institutions.

The Canadian Prime Minister on Monday met with the pontiff at the Vatican as part of his visit to Italy for the G7 summit in Taormina over the weekend. 

He told the Pope Francis to come to Canada to apologise as it was important he tenders an apology to help make genuine progress on resolution and reconciliation with the Aboriginal population in Canada.

'I told him how important it is for Canadians to move forward on real reconciliation with the indigenous peoples and I highlighted how he could help by issuing an apology,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters after meeting Pope Francis

Pope celebrates Holy Thursday in prison, washes the feet of 12 prison inmates [Photos]

Pope Francis during the Holy Thursday celebration washed the feet of prison inmates at the Paliano detention center in Italy for former mafia members. As part of the mass celebration, the pontiff bent to wash and kiss the right foot of 12 inmates in commemoration of Jesus' gesture of humility towards his 12 apostles on the night before he was crucified.

Two of the inmates, who participated in the ceremony are said to be serving life sentences while the remaining 10 are due to be released between 2019 and 2073.

According to the Vatican, three of the inmates were women and one was a born Muslim who had converted to Catholicism. The group consisted of 10 Italians, an Albanian and a prisoner from the pope’s homeland of Argentina.

According to the pope in his massage culled from AP, he said by washing the feet of inmates, he was willing to do 'the work of a slave in order to sow love among us' and urged the prisoners to help each other.

'If you can do something, a service for your companions in prison, do it,' he said, adding that 'this is love … to be the servant of others.'

He added:

'We are all sinners. We all have defects,' the pope told the inmates during an improvised sermon broadcasted by Vatican Radio.

Pope Francis allows all priests to absolve women who have abortions

Pope Francis is allowing all priests to absolve women of the “grave sin” of abortion, extending indefinitely special permission he had granted for the duration of the just-ended Holy Year of Mercy.

Francis wrote in the Apostolic Letter made public by the Vatican on Monday that 

“there is no sin that God’s mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled” with God.

But he also wrote: 

“I wish to restate as firmly as I can that abortion is a grave sin, since it puts an end to an innocent life.”

Because the Roman Catholic Church holds abortion to be such a serious sin, it had long put the matter of granting forgiveness for it in the hands of a bishop, who could either hear the woman’s confession himself or delegate that to a priest who was expert in such situations.