“It’s not strange. It’s not a catastrophe. You can change the pope,” Pope Francis said while sitting in an airplane wheelchair during a 45-minute news conference.
In Quebec, Pope Francis spent time meeting with Canadian government officials about the rights of Indigenous peoples, a substantial step in the at times tenuous relationship between the Holy See and Canada.
After a brochure that demonized traditions of the Oglala Lakota Sioux people was handed out to young people, tribal leaders took action, approving an ordinance that curtails Christian missions at Pine Ridge.
A group of elderly survivors of abuse at Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel Orphanage are finally receiving compensation ordered by a landmark ruling in 2020 that went against the Archdiocese of St. John’s.
Meeting Indigenous survivors of residential schools in Canada, Pope Francis entrusted them and the journey of truth, healing and reconciliation to three women: St. Anne, Mary and St. Kateri Tekakwitha.
“I would like once more to ask forgiveness of all the victims,” the pope said in a homily at Quebec’s Notre Dame Cathedral. “The pain and the shame we feel must become an occasion for conversion: Never again!”
Papal bulls written in the 15th century granted Catholic kings permission to colonize non-Christian lands and enslave Indigenous Peoples. Will Pope Francis formally rescind those decrees during his Canada pilgrimage?
I get the sense that a monumental moment in history “passed us by” this week when Russia announced on Tuesday that it would withdraw from the International Space Station before the end of the decade.
“The enemy,” or the devil, “wants to paralyze us with grief and remorse, to convince us that nothing else can be done, that it is hopeless to try to find a way to start over,” the pope said.
Diego Fares, S.J., who died of cancer last week in Rome at age 66, was arguably the greatest interpreter of the thought and way of proceeding of Pope Francis.
In a British-built fort on the highest hill in Quebec City, Pope Francis spoke to Canadian government and cultural leaders about the never-ending challenge of multiculturalism.