Canadian police have issued a new arrest warrant for a French priest accused of sexually assaulting Inuit children more than 30 years ago, authorities said Tuesday (March 29).
"In September, the police received a complaint of sexual assault that occurred approximately 47 years ago,"
police in Nunavut, a northern Canadian territory, told AFP in an email.
And following this investigation, at the end of February
"Father Johannes Rivoire, 93, was charged with sexual assault"
and an arrest warrant issued, according to the police.
Read alsoWhy is Canada still in conflict with Native Americans?
On Monday, an Inuit delegation visiting the Vatican to discuss abuses committed in residential schools by members of the church asked Pope Francis to personally intervene in the case.
Inuit representatives said at a press conference that they had asked the pontiff to press for the priest to be
"tried for the wrongs he has caused"
in Canada or France.
This French priest, who spent three decades in the great Canadian north, has already been the subject of an arrest warrant which has never been acted upon.
He left Canada in 1993 and lives in France, in Lyon.
Interviewed recently by the newspaper
Le Monde
, he proclaims his innocence.
The policy of assimilation implemented by the Canadian authorities vis-à-vis the Amerindian peoples for decades led to numerous abuses, which are recognized today.
The historic meeting this week between the pope and a delegation of the various Canadian indigenous peoples should make it possible to
“recognize the responsibility”
of the Church in the system of boarding schools for indigenous children.
The discovery of hundreds of unmarked children's graves in recent months has rocked Canada and many survivors are now awaiting an apology from the pope.
Read alsoIndigenous people: Canada facing the shadows of its past
Between the end of the 19th century and the 1980s, some 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly recruited into more than 130 boarding schools across the country, where they were cut off from their family, language and culture.
Thousands have never returned - authorities estimate their number at between 4,000 and 6,000.
In 2015, a national commission of inquiry called this system “cultural genocide”.