Canadian and Vatican officials have been working behind the scenes to arrange the meeting, which officials say is an opportunity for Pope Francis to make amends for a dark chapter in the Catholic Church’s attempt to “Christianize” Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Metis people. Mr. Trudeau will use the one-on-one meeting in the Apostolic Palace to request a papal apology and an “open invitation” for the Pontiff to visit Canada to address victims of the residential school system. “The parties then focused on the themes of integration and reconciliation, as well as religious freedom and current ethical events.”

The vast majority of residential schools were run by Catholics, which would make the Pope’s potential apology so important to Indigenous communities. In a 2009 meeting with an Indigenous delegation from Canada that included Phil Fontaine, a residential school survivor and then-grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Pope Benedict expressed “sorrow” and “sympathy” and condemned those who had harmed children. A key recommendation was a call for a papal apology to residential school survivors, saying the church-run system sought to remove indigenous culture, identity and language in what it deplored as “cultural genocide.”

The federal government forcibly removed 150,000 aboriginal children from their families over the course of a century, putting them in church-run schools with the goal of assimilation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a report in 2015, calling for a papal apology to residential school survivors, saying the church-run schools attempted to assimilate Indigenous children by removing their culture, identity and language. In 2015, former prime minister Stephen Harper met for 10 minutes with Pope Frances at the Vatican and drew his attention to the troubling findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but he stopped short of inviting him to Canada to apologize. U.S. President Donald Trump, who like Trudeau had been in Brussels for the NATO leaders’ meeting and in Sicily for the G7 summit, met the Pope for about 30 minutes last week. “We talked about important it is to both highlight the scientific basis of protecting our planet with the moral and ethical obligation to lead and to build a better future for all peoples on this earth.”

The Pope also gave the Prime Minister a copy of the encyclical on the environment as well as ones on family and evangelism and a gold medal marking his four years as pontiff. Mr. Trudeau, who later introduced the Pope to his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, said he also had a “deeply personal and wide-ranging and thoughtful conversation with the leader of my own faith.”

Mr. Trudeau later met separately with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, where they discussed migration, climate change and promoting human rights.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asks Pope Francis for a public apology for the Roman Catholic Church's role in the abuse of indigenous children in the residential school system. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI issued an expression of sorrow after an audience with Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine.