“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.
“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.