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Prime Minister Stephen Harper is being urged to take advantage of an audience with Pope Francis this week to seek a formal apology for the role the Roman Catholic Church played in Canada’s residential school disgrace.

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NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says the timing of Harper’s visit to the Vatican is fortuitous, coming just one week after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on the pope to travel to Canada to issue an apology.

Mulcair says Harper should ask Pope Francis if he’d be willing to do so.

Harper is scheduled to meet the pope on Thursday, as he wraps up a whirlwind trip to Ukraine, Germany for the G-7 summit, Poland and Rome.

Church officials in Canada have in the past apologized for the abuse suffered by thousands of aboriginal children in church-run residential schools, as have the United, Anglican and Presbyterian churches.

But Justice Murray Sinclair, who headed the just-concluded Truth and Reconciliation Commission, says the Pope is the “spiritual and moral leader” of the church and residential school survivors are disappointed that he has not yet made a “clear and emphatic public apology” in Canada.