World

Pope Francis on Tuesday delivered an open-air mass before tens of thousands of people thronging a stadium in western Canada, a day after making a landmark apology for the abuse of Indigenous children at Catholic-run schools.

The 85-year-old pontiff waved and smiled as he made his way in the popemobile through the venue in Edmonton, in the province of Alberta, pausing several times to kiss babies handed up to him through the crowds.

Francis then delivered his homily in Spanish, in one of the largest open-air events of his visit, praying for a “future in which the history of violence and marginalization suffered by our Indigenous brothers and sisters is never repeated.”

Security was tight as people took their seats under sunny skies ahead of the service. Officials said some 50,000 people attended.

Traditional music filled the air, while Indigenous people in the crowd were recognizable by their orange shirts — intended to symbolize the failed policy of forced assimilation they endured in the country’s infamous residential schools.

Some held a banner reading “Every child matters,” while others wore traditional headdresses. Francis himself wore a garment that officials said had been inspired by Indigenous art.

In the first major address of his visit on Monday, to a gathering of Indigenous people in the community of Maskwacis, south of Edmonton, Francis offered a long-awaited apology to Canada’s First Nations, Metis and Inuit people for the “evil” inflicted on them for decades.

“I am sorry,” he said, citing the “cultural destruction” and the “physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse” of children over nearly a century at the schools.

After Tuesday’s mass, the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics is expected to continue what he has described as a “penitential” journey, travelling to Lac Ste Anne, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Edmonton, for a liturgical celebration at one of North America’s most important pilgrimage sites.

St. Anne, whose feast day is Tuesday, was the grandmother of Jesus in the Catholic tradition. 

Every year since the end of the 19th century, thousands of pilgrims mainly from Canada and the United States have come to bathe and pray in the healing waters, according to Indigenous rites. 

– ‘Path together’ –

From the late 1800s to the 1990s, Canada’s government sent about 150,000 children into 139 residential schools run by the Church, where they were cut off from their families, language and culture.

Many were physically and sexually abused, and thousands are believed to have died of disease, malnutrition or neglect.

Monday’s apology by the pope for the role Church members had played in the abuse had a powerful impact on many, leaving survivors feeling overwhelmed and leaders praising it as historic, even as some warned it was only a first step.

“Where do you go from there?” David Henderson, from the Manitoba First Nations community, told AFP in Edmonton. “It’s still going to take a lot of healing.”

Others were more critical.

“I feel it would have meant more to a lot of people if it came from the heart without reading a sheet of paper,” said Caroline L. Bruyeri, a former student of one of the schools.

Henry Swanpy, of the Sagkeeng First Nations community, said he was “disappointed” the pope had not delivered his apology directly in English, rather than in Spanish repeated through an interpreter.

“He should have learned to apologize in our language,” Swanpy said.

Since May 2021, more than 1,300 unmarked graves have been discovered at the sites of the former schools, sending shockwaves through Canada — which has slowly begun to acknowledge this long, dark chapter in its history.

More than 4,000 children have been identified as dying in the schools, but the true toll is estimated to be at least 6,000.

The abuse created trauma for generations.

Following a July 27-29 visit to Quebec City, Pope Francis — who often uses a wheelchair due to knee pain — will end his trip in Iqaluit, capital of the northern territory of Nunavut and home to the largest Inuit population in Canada.

There he will meet again with former residential school students, before returning to Italy. 

Moscow said on Tuesday it was leaving the International Space Station “after 2024”, amid tensions with the West, in a move analysts warned could lead to a halt to Russian manned flights.

The confirmation of the long-mooted move comes as ties unravel between the Kremlin and the West over Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine and several rounds of devastating sanctions against Russia, including its space sector.

Space experts said Russia’s departure from the International Space Station would seriously affect the country’s space sector and deal a major blow to its programme of manned flights, a major source of Russian pride.

“Of course, we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made,” Yury Borisov, the new head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, told President Vladimir Putin, according to a Kremlin account of their meeting.

“I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station,” Borisov added, calling it the domestic space programme’s main “priority”.

“Good,” Putin replied.

The ISS is due to be retired after 2024, although US space agency NASA says it can remain operational until 2030.

The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of hope for US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.

Washington has not received “any official word” from Russia yet, said Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS for NASA.

Asked whether she wanted the US-Russia space relationship to end, she replied: “No, absolutely not.”

Until now, space exploration has been one of the few areas where cooperation between Russia and the United States and its allies had not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and elsewhere.

– ‘Like an old woman’s flat’-

Russia is heavily reliant on imports of everything from manufacturing equipment to consumer goods, and the effects of Western sanctions are expected to wreak havoc on the country’s economy in the long term.

Space expert Vadim Lukashevich said space science cannot flourish in a heavily sanctioned country.

“If the ISS ceases to exist in 2024, we will have nowhere to fly,” Lukashevich told AFP. “At stake is the very preservation of manned flights in Russia, the birthplace of cosmonautics.”

Pointing to Russia’s growing scientific and technological isolation, Lukashevich said the authorities could not plan more than several months in advance and added that even if Russia builds an orbiting station, it would be a throwback to the 1980s.

“It will be archaic, like an old woman’s flat, with a push-button telephone and a record-player,” he said.

Space analyst Vitaly Yegorov struck a similar note, saying it was next to impossible to build a new orbiting station from scratch in a few years.

“Neither in 2024, nor in 2025, nor in 2026 will there be a Russian orbital station,” Yegorov told AFP.

He added that creating a fully-fledged space station would take at least a decade of “the most generous funding”.

Yegorov said Russia’s departure from the ISS meant Moscow might have to put on ice its programme of manned flights “for several years” or even “indefinitely”.

The move could also see Russia abandon its chief spaceport, Baikonur, which it is renting from Kazakhstan, Yegorov said.

Russian Soyuz rockets were the only way to reach the International Space Station until SpaceX, run by the billionaire Elon Musk, debuted a capsule in 2020.

– ‘Difficult to restore’ –

The Soviet space programme can boast of a number of key accomplishments, including sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite four years earlier. These feats remain a major source of national pride in Russia.

But experts say Roscosmos is now a shadow of its former self and has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks, including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.

Borisov, appointed in mid-July, replaced Dmitry Rogozin, a firebrand politician known for his bombastic statements.

Rogozin had previously warned that without cooperation from Moscow, the ISS could de-orbit and fall on US or European territory.

In a possible sign of disagreement with Borisov, Vladimir Solovyov, chief designer at spacecraft manufacturer Energia, said Russia should not rush to quit the ISS.

“If we halt manned flights for several years, then it will be very difficult to restore what has been achieved,” he was quoted as telling the Russky Cosmos magazine.

Myanmar’s junta lashed out Tuesday against international condemnation of the country’s first use of capital punishment in decades, saying the four executed prisoners — two of them prominent democracy fighters — “deserved many death sentences”.

The executions announced Monday sparked condemnation from around the globe, heightened fears that more will follow and prompted calls for sterner international measures against the already-isolated junta.

But the military authorities were defiant, with spokesman Zaw Min Tun insisting the men were “given the right to defend themselves according to court procedure”.

“If we compare their sentence with other death penalty cases, they have committed crimes for which they should have been given death sentences many times,” he said at a regular press briefing in the capital Naypyidaw.

“They harmed many innocent people. There were many big losses which could not be replaced.”

The prisoners, who included a former lawmaker from ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, had been allowed to meet family members through video conferencing, he said, without providing details. 

The country’s foreign ministry said it “rejects in the strongest terms” criticism doled out by international powers including the UN, EU, United States and former colonial ruler Britain.

“Such concerns and criticisms on the Myanmar government’s legal actions could be tantamount to interfering in the internal affairs of the country and indirectly abetting terrorism,” the ministry said in a statement.

– ‘Extremely troubled’ –

Phyo Zeya Thaw, a former lawmaker from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) was arrested in November and accused of orchestrating several attacks on regime forces, including a gun attack on a commuter train in Yangon that killed five policemen.

He was sentenced to death in January for offences under anti-terrorism laws.

Democracy activist Kyaw Min Yu — better known as “Jimmy” — received the same sentence from the military tribunal.

The junta had previously issued an arrest warrant, alleging he had incited unrest with his social media posts.

It would be up to prison authorities to decide whether their families would be permitted to retrieve their bodies, Zaw Min Tun said. 

The two other men were sentenced to death for killing a woman they alleged was an informer for the junta in Yangon.

The junta has sentenced dozens of anti-coup activists to death as part of its crackdown on dissent after seizing power last year, but Myanmar had not carried out an execution in decades.

After a chorus of international condemnation on Monday, there was fresh criticism of the junta on Tuesday.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc, which has led diplomatic efforts to end the crisis, said it was “extremely troubled and deeply saddened” by the executions.

In a statement issued by current chair Cambodia, it accused the junta of a “gross lack of will” to engage with ASEAN’s efforts to facilitate dialogue between the military and its opponents.

In Bangkok, hundreds of people staged a noisy protest outside the Myanmar embassy. 

Some held photos of Ko Jimmy and Phyo Zeya Thaw alongside Aung San Suu Kyi as they chanted “We want democracy.”

And Malaysia’s foreign minister Saifuddin Abdullah slammed the executions, calling them a “crime against humanity”.

He called for a review of the so-called five-point consensus agreed by Southeast Asian leaders last year aimed at defusing the political crisis in Myanmar following a coup.

A spokesperson from the foreign affairs ministry of Thailand — another ASEAN member — said it regretted “the loss of four lives which aggravates the vexing problems of Myanmar”.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday defended his country’s relationship with Russia, as Moscow’s top diplomat toured Africa to drum up support over the war in Ukraine.

“How can we be against somebody who has never harmed us,” the veteran Ugandan leader said alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a press conference in the town of Entebbe. 

“If Russia makes mistakes, we tell them. When they have not made mistakes, we can’t be against them,” he added, hailing Russia for backing anti-colonial movements in Africa.

Uganda was one of 17 African nations to abstain during a vote in March on a UN resolution that overwhelmingly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Vulnerable countries on the continent and elsewhere in the world, however, have been hard hit by the fallout from the war that has sent prices of fuel and food soaring.

Lavrov insisted Russia was not to blame.

“There is a very loud campaign around this, but our African friends understand their root cause,” Lavrov said. 

“They are not related to what is happening within the special military operation,” he said, using the Kremlin’s term for the conflict.

Lavrov’s trip comes hot on the heels of a landmark deal Russia and Ukraine signed on Friday with the United Nations and Turkey, which is aimed at relieving the global food crisis caused by blocked Black Sea grain deliveries.

Less than 24 hours later Moscow struck the Ukrainian port in Odessa — one of three exit hubs designated in the agreement — sparking fury in Kyiv and heightening fears the Kremlin would not go through with the deal.

As relations with the West have collapsed over the conflict, Lavrov said Africa would play a greater role in Russia’s foreign policy.

Museveni also said Kampala would cooperate with Moscow in a range of fields including space, energy, agriculture and vaccines.

“Our interest with Russia is when there is progress with Russia, we (Africa) benefit,” he added.

Lavrov arrived in Ethiopia later Tuesday on the latest leg of a trip that took him to Egypt and Congo-Brazzaville before Uganda.