The pope made the comment while flying back to Rome after a week-long trip to Canada, where he delivered a historic apology for the Church’s role in policy.
A native Canadian reporter on the plane asked him why he didn’t use the word genocide during the trip and whether he would accept members of the Church taking part in genocide.
“It’s true that I didn’t use the word because I didn’t think of it. But I described genocide. I apologized, I asked forgiveness for this activity, which was genocide,” Francis said.
“I condemned this by taking children away and trying to change their culture, their thoughts, their traditions, a race, an entire culture,” the Pope added.
Between 1881 and 1996, more than 150,000 indigenous children were separated from their families and sent to residential schools. Many children were starved, beaten and sexually abused in a system the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide.” Read the full story
The schools were run for the governments by religious groups, most of them Catholic priests and nuns.
Last Monday, Francis visited the town of Maskwacis, site of two former residential schools, where he apologized, calling forced assimilation “bad” and a “disastrous mistake”.
He also apologized for the Christian support of the “colonizing mentality” of the time.
‘New Phase of Papacy’
Pope Francis said his increasing age and his difficulty walking have ushered in a new, slower phase of his papacy and reiterated that he would one day be ready to step down if serious health problems prevent him from leading the church.
“I don’t think I can continue to travel at the same pace as before,” he said in answers to questions from reporters on board the plane.
For the past few months, Francis, 85, has been using a wheelchair, cane or walker because of knee pain caused by a fracture and inflamed ligament.
He walked with a cane to the aft cabin where reporters travel, but sat in a wheelchair for the traditional 45-minute post-travel press conference, the first time in his 37 international trips since being elected Pope in 2013. .
“I think at my age and with this limitation I have to keep myself a little bit in order to serve the church, or decide to step aside,” Francis said.
The pace of the trip to Canada, which focused on apologizing for the Church’s role in residential schools to assimilate Indigenous children, was slower than in the past, usually with only two events a day and long rest periods.
Francis said he preferred not to have surgery on his knee because he didn’t want a repeat of the long-term negative side effects of the anesthesia he suffered after undergoing bowel surgery a year ago.
“But I will try to keep traveling to be close to the people because it is a way of serving,” he said.
He indicated that he would first travel to places he had already promised, such as South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon and perhaps Kazakhstan, before deciding on future trips.
“I have all the good will, but we’ll have to see what the leg says,” he said.
In an interview with Reuters this month, Francis said he had no plans to resign anytime soon.
He has often said he can follow in the footsteps of Pope Benedict, who in 2013 became the first pope in 600 years to step down rather than rule for life.
“This is, to be fair, not a catastrophe. There could be a change of popes, no problem with that,” he said.
“The door is open. It’s one of the normal options. Until today I haven’t used that door. I didn’t think it necessary to think about this possibility, but that doesn’t mean I won’t the day after tomorrow” don’t start it to think,” he said.
“This trip was a bit of a test. It’s true that I can’t travel in this state. Maybe the style needs to change, make fewer trips, take the trips I promised to do, do things again. But it will take the Lord are they decided. The door is open,” he said.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella / editing by Frances Kerry)