Pope Francis left Rome on Sunday for a trip to Canada to apologise for the role of the Roman Catholic Church in residential schools where many indigenous children were abused.

The 85-year-old pope, his entourage and journalists flew out of Rome’s Fiumicino airport on an ITA Italian airline plane enroute to Edmonton, capital of Alberta.

The week-long trip will include at least five encounterswith native people as Francis makes good on a promise toapologise on their home territory for the Church’s role in the state-sanctioned schools, which sought to erase indigenous cultures.

It also will be a test of pope’s health. He had to cancel atrip to Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan in early July because of a knee problem that forced him to use first a wheel chair and later a cane.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters this month, Francisgave details of his ailment for the first time in public, saying he had suffered “a small fracture” in the knee when he took a misstep while a ligament was inflamed.