By the time he arrived, the clapboard structure, which had stood on Indigenous Penticton Indian Band lands for a century, had already burned to the ground. 

As he sifted through the rubble and ruins the question he kept asking himself was: "How could this have happened - and what would come next?"

The answer, it seemed, was more devastation.

Two hours after the Sacred Heart's fire was reported on June 21, St Gregory's, just 30 miles down the road and also on Indigenous lands, had gone up in flames. A third, St Ann's, followed suit.

Fire chiefs said the timing of the blazes, which began on National Indigenous People’s Day, did not seem coincidental.

No one has claimed responsibility, but the suspected arson attacks came after more than 1,000 unmarked graves believed to hold Indigenous children were discovered at three former schools operated by the Catholic Church.

There were 751 found in western Saskatchewan, and 215 and 182 near two separate schools in British Columbia.

Since then, nearly two dozen more churches across Canada, many of which stood on Indigenous lands, have been anonymously vandalised or reduced to cinders.

Just this week, police responded to yet another "suspicious" blaze at a church in Surrey, British Columbia.

By the time the fire was extinguished, St. George Coptic Orthodox Church was almost entirely demolished and only a single wall was left standing. No one was reported to have been injured. 

These incidents are being seen as part of a wider reckoning in Canada over one of its darkest chapters: a century-long forced assimilation programme during which around 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and sent to government-funded residential schools.

Thousands of children are thought to have died from abuse or disease in the schools, which operated until the late 1990s. Many of the schools were run by the Catholic Church.

Canada, which was set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008 to investigate the schools, described the practices as “cultural genocide.”

Initially, it was estimated that 4,100 children disappeared from the schools.

Murray Sinclair, an indigenous former judge who led the commission, estimated that the true number could exceed 10,000.

"There is a deep sense of sadness in the hands of our people," Father Obi told The Sunday Telegraph.

He said he did not want to speculate on the cause of the fire at the Sacred Heart, but acknowledged recent events had produced a palpable sense of "anger towards the church."

"We wake up from time to time and hear that another church has burned down.”

He insisted that while "anger makes a lot of noise", it did not reflect how the majority of the country felt.