Rome, 24 July 2022 (dpa/MIA) — Pope Francis has departed on a trip to Canada during which he is expected to ask for forgiveness after a series of revelations about abuse and violence in institutions run by the Catholic Church. The pope begins his six-day journey in Edmonton, where he lands on Sunday. He is due to meet several of Canada's Indigenous groups, after the nation was rocked by the gruesome discoveries of hundreds of children's bodies near former Catholic boarding schools last year. They triggered outage at the Catholic Church, which between the 17th century and the 1990s placed Indigenous children, who had been snatched from their families, in the institutions. In 2021, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanded that the pontiff come to Canada and apologize after the discovery of the graves. The pope is also set to visit Québec in the predominantly French-speaking part of the country and the coastal city of Iqaluit in Canada's far north.