This summer, Pope Francis will be coming to Canada after meeting one on one with First Nations leaders at the Vatican, in Rome.

Before the delegation left Rome, they gifted Pope Francis a pair of baby moccasins.  The intention is the Pontiff will return them to the steps of a residential school in Saskatchewan when he visits in July.

Saskatchewan was home to 22 of these residential schools, and half were run by the Catholic Church.

Dr Marie-Anne Daywalker-Pelletier says its an opportunity to “show good faith in his apology and to acknowledge the harms committed by the Church to thousands of First Nations survivors and their descendants and the babies that we are looking for through radar searches today and for the babies we will never find but we know were born at these schools”.

In a news release through the FSIN, Daywalker-Pelletier goes on to say “We welcome Pope Francis to walk within the same walls of the institutions that committed genocide against us through the theft and abuses of our children. The front steps of the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School would an ideal location for Pope Francis to place those baby moccasins in memory of our children that will never return home and for the ones who came home changed forever.”