Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked Pope Francis to apologise for the role of the Catholic Church in a Canadian school system where indigenous children were abused for decades, BBC reports.
"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," Trudeau told reporters after meeting the pope.
Some 150,000 aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families, and sent to live in church-run boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their language or practise their own culture.