Pope ends penitent Canada trip

Pope Francis ended his trip to Canada Friday as he began -- by apologising to Indigenous survivors of Catholic-run schools where for decades children were abused, after meeting with Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic.

The six-day "penitential pilgrimage" that took the pontiff from Alberta in western Canada to Quebec and then the far north allowed him to meet many of Canada's First Nations, Metis and Inuit people, who for years had been awaiting his plea for forgiveness.

While many of them welcomed the gesture by the 85-year-old, who spent much of the trip in a wheelchair due to knee pain, they also made clear that this was only a first step on a journey of reconciliation.

The pope wrapped up his journey in the capital of the vast northern territory of Nunavut, Iqaluit, which means "the place of many fish."

Francis met with survivors of the schools, then told a crowd of around 2,000 mainly Indigenous people that their stories "renewed in me the indignation and shame that I have felt for months."

"I want to tell you how very sorry I am and to ask for forgiveness for the evil perpetrated by not a few Catholics who contributed to the policies of cultural assimilation and enfranchisement in those schools," he said.

From the late 1800s to the 1990s, Canada's government sent about 150,000 children into 139 residential schools run by the Catholic Church.

Many were physically and sexually abused at the schools, in what a truth and reconciliation commission later called a "cultural genocide."