For the first time since the start of the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis received in a private audience this morning a top-ranking member of the Russian Orthodox Church, second only to patriarch Kirill of Moscow.
“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!”
The image of Pope Francis, all alone on the side of the lake, imploring God for healing, will surely remain as an iconic image of this penitential pilgrimage.
Pope Francis condemned Canada’s residential school system as “a deplorable evil” and asked forgiveness of the Indigenous Peoples for Christians participation in it.