In Canada, four churches have been burned to the ground, and others vandalized, following the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at two former residential schools.

Father Stefano Penna, rector of St. Paul’s Co-Cathedral in Saskatoon, said he understood the anger felt by indigenous people.

“My heart is broken at what was done in the name of Christ, but what was done actually more by acquiescing to a kind of government and social policy that sought to to ‘civilize and colonialize’ people,” he said. At the same time, “This objectively is a crime. This is vandalism. . . . We don’t ever solve anything that was hateful in the past by continuing to hate.”