Vatican City ? Pope Benedict XVI apologized Wednesday to native Canadians who were physically and sexually abused at church-run boarding schools they were forced to attend, saying he was sorry for their anguish and was praying they would heal.

Benedict told a group of former students and victims of his “personal anguish” over their suffering, they said. They emerged from the meeting happy and comforted, said Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indian children in Canada were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools as an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society.