OTTAWA: Two Catholic churches in Canada went up in flames early Wednesday amid growing calls for a papal apology for a century of abuses at indigenous residential schools where hundreds of unmarked graves were recently discovered. Federal police said the fires at the Morinville church north of Edmonton, Alberta, and the St. Kateri Tekakwitha Church on Sipekne’katik First Nation near Halifax in Nova Scotia are being investigated as possible arson.
“We are investigating it as suspicious,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal Sheldon Robb told AFP, speaking on the fire that gutted the Morinville church.
Corporal Chris Marshall of the Nova Scotia RCMP said the same about the fire that severely damaged the St. Kateri Tekakwitha Church. The blazes bring to seven the number of churches across Canada destroyed or damaged by suspicious fires, most of them in indigenous communities, in recent days.
Several others were vandalized, including with red paint.
No direct link has officially been made to the discovery of remains of 215 children in unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in May and 751 more unmarked graves at another school in Marieval in Saskatchewan last week.
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