Pope Francis Visits Indigenous Residential School Survivors

Brian Normand spent only a couple years—between the ages of five and six—at St. Charles Day Residential School in Manitoba, Canada, in the early 1960s, but he still feels the effects of that experience decades later.

“I was emotionally, physically, and mentally abused there. I left with a broken spirit,” the now-65-year-old tells TIME in a recent Zoom conversation from Winnipeg.

Holding an Eagle feather that, for him, represents truth telling, he recalls how staff members called him a savage, hit him with a yardstick and smacked him across the head if he spoke Michif, the language of the Métis Nation. For years afterwards he would lash out at people and had to work on managing his anger. Whenever he hears news coverage of the topic, feelings of anger return and “I hold my fists and cry.”

But Normand has found healing through sharing the story of what he endured with friends and family, and he hopes Pope Francis will take to heart the stories he hears from fellow survivors during his visit to Canada over the next week.

The Pontiff will travel to Canada on Sunday for a week-long tour of the country on what he has described as a “pilgrimage of penance.” He is expected to issue a wider apology for the Catholic Church’s role in running Indigenous boarding schools throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

“Unfortunately in Canada many Christians, including some members of religious orders, contributed to the policies of cultural assimilation that in the past gravely damaged native populations in various ways,” Pope Francis said last Sunday.

To Normand, the Pope’s apology and Canada trip is “unbelievable.”

“It’s an important first step. Survivors like myself have been waiting generations for this apology,” he says….