Back in Rome, the Pontiff resumed his Wednesday general audiences and spoke on his recent trip to Canada.
Newsroom (05/08/2022 08:00 AM, Gaudium Press) During the general audience of August 3rd, Pope Francis took stock of his trip to Canada last week. He described it as “a trip different from the others,” expressing closeness and the request for forgiveness to the native peoples of that country for the faults committed by the children of the Church. It was surprising that Francis entered the Paul VI hall walking, and not in a wheelchair, as people are getting used to seeing him.
“Walking together,” the motto of the apostolic journey, is “a path of reconciliation and healing, which presupposes historical knowledge, listening to survivors, awareness and above all conversion, a change of mentality,” he said.
It was a penitential pilgrimage developed in three major stages, in Edmonton, to the west; in Quebec, to the east; and in Iqaluit, to the north. This pilgrimage also had three spiritual moments, memory, reconciliation, “letting ourselves be reconciled by Christ, who is our peace,” and finally healing, on the day of St. Joachim and St. Anne, on the shores of Lake St. Anne:
“We can all draw from Christ, the source of living water, the Grace that gives us the healing of our wounds: to Him, who embodies the closeness, compassion and tenderness of the Father, we bring the traumas and violence suffered by the Indigenous peoples of Canada and the whole world; we bring the wounds of all the poor and excluded of our societies; and also the wounds of Christian communities, who always need to let themselves be healed by the Lord.”
In these moments, silence and prayer were not lacking.
The last meeting he had in Canada, with the Inuit population, young and old, was a sign of hope:
“Also in Canada it is a key binomial, a sign of the times: young and old in dialogue to walk together in history between memory and prophecy. May the fortitude and peaceful action of the indigenous peoples of Canada be an example for all native peoples not to close themselves off, but to offer their indispensable contribution for a more fraternal humanity, one that knows how to love creation and the Creator.”
With information from Vatican News.
Compiled by Camille Mittermeier
