The Cowessess First Nation will put a name to each of the hundreds of bodies found at the unmarked graves on the former Marieval Indian Residential School, vows Chief Cadmus Delorme.

Over the past few weeks, social media has exploded with anger, sadness and shock as the bodies of hundreds of Indigenous children have been found buried at several former residential schools across Canada.

It is heartening to see Catholic clergy calling out the stream of inaccuracies and exaggerations around the Church’s responsibility for the residential schools debacle.

While the work toward a formal apology from Pope Francis is ongoing, a clear majority of Canadians hold the Catholic Church primarily responsible for the damage done by residential schools, according to a Leger poll conducted June 4- 6.

Somehow a story about hundreds of unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School became a story about what Pope Francis should do, not a story about the lives lost or why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau only rushed to provide money for documenting such graves when Kamloops was in the headlines, five years after he first promised to do so.

A meeting between Pope Francis and a delegation of Canadian Indigenous people at the Vatican is being planned and expected before the end of the year.

Residents of my Edmonton neighbourhood are setting up front yard signs of solidarity to honour the 215 former students at the Kamloops Residential School whose remains were found outside the school. As well, demonstrations were held in some centres regarding the detection of these unmarked graves. This discovery has moved people in a way that earlier revelations about the schools did not.

“Sorry” is a powerful word, but it is only a start to heal the deep wound inflicted by residential schools.

As 10,000 people marched in sorrow and in anger from Queen’s Park to Nathan Phillips Square, Vivian Timmins just had to be there — because Timmins is a residential school survivor.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis led hundreds of pilgrims and visitors in St. Peter’s Square in a moment of silent prayer for the Indigenous children who died in Canadian residential schools and for their grieving families.

Cardinal Thomas Collins apologized during his live-streamed Mass from St. Michael’s Cathedral June 6 and honoured those who died or were mistreated in Canada’s residential schools.

There’s a unique wallop in seeing your hometown linked by national and international media to the finding of a “mass grave” full of children.

The “betrayal of trust” by those responsible for Canada’s residential schools must “compel us to ensure that our sins are not repeated,” said Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto.

It came like a punch in the gut. The news of the discovery of the bodies of 215 children on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School have shaken us to the core. How could this happen in Canada? How could this happen under the roof of an institution run by Catholic religious orders? Despite all the stories of abuse at residential schools, despite the chronicling of horrors in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report of 2015, despite the history of systemic racism that has victimized Canada’s Indigenous people … this news rips opens wounds that have not even come close to healing.

The Archbishop of Vancouver is offering “my deep apology” to those affected by the discovery of the bodies of 215 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in B.C.