Currents News Staff
Healing and reconciliation continues during Pope Francis’ journey in Canada. The visit to Lac Ste. Anne goes with the theme, but there are some Indigenous people who think the pontiff’s effort won’t change anything.
Joining Currents News to talk about the Holy Father’s trip is John Allen, Editor of Crux, to discuss how the pontiff’s apologies have been received and what concrete actions the Indigenous people want to see for healing and hope going forward.
Currents News Staff
On the first full day of Pope Francis’ trip to Canada, chiefs and survivors of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations shared their response to the Pope’s historic apology.
For some, it was a moment to reflect on those who did not survive, those friends and families who did not have the chance to share their stories. It reminded the survivors, also known as thrivers, of their mission in making these stories known.
“I promised them that I would be their voice. I promised them that I would go out there and tell the truth. You know it’s about truth, justice, healing, reconciliation. But one thing we talked about today is hope. We have to bring in hope into our communities,” said Chief Randy Ermineskin from the Ermineskin Cree Nation.
But Pope Francis’ apology does not mean forgetting the pain and sadness of the past. Words are not enough to end, as Chief Desmond Bull calls it, the “intergenerational trauma” these families endured.
“Instead of getting over it, I’m asking you to get with it. Get with learning about our history, get with learning about our culture, our people, who we are. Get with reaching out to your neighbouring Métis, Inuit or First Nations person and learn more about them. You want to help with our healing? Get with our healing and be part of our journey,” said Chief Desmond Bull, from the Louis Bull Tribe of the Maskwacis Nation.
Though the path of understanding and healing will take years, Grand Chief George Arcand believes Pope Francis’ trip to Canada is the Church’s first step in making amends with the indigenous groups.
“After meeting with the Pope and hearing his words today – I believe there is a path forward together. There’s a lot of work to be done,” said Grand Chief George from the Confederacy of Treaty Six Grand Chief & Chief of Alexander First Nation. “Today I believe we begin a new journey. Today, I believe we now start to have to do the work necessary to make things better. And I sit by my fellow Chiefs and Survivors. To build that new road, to create a better place for our people to live.”
Pope Francis’ meetings with indigenous people in Canada opens a door to healing and hope. It also opens the door to conversation and education—an education on the importance of embracing diversity and the need to walk this road of reconciliation together into a brighter future.
By Currents News Staff and Cindy Wooden
LAC STE. ANNE, Alberta (CNS) — Pope Francis joined Indigenous pilgrims at a lake known for miraculous healings and encouraged them to lay their burdens on the shore.
Since the 1880s, the Cree and the Sioux, the Métis, the Blackfoot, the Dene and others from across Turtle Island — North America — have traveled to Lac Ste. Anne, about 45 miles west of Edmonton, for a pilgrimage around the July 26 feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne.
Like most of the 40,000 pilgrims who make the journey each year, Pope Francis paused at a statue of St. Anne on his way to the water, paying tribute to Jesus’ grandmother.
Near the lake, known for its healing properties, the pope stopped to pray facing the East, then the South, then the West. Finally, facing the North and overlooking the lake, he blessed the water, just as bishops have done for decades at the start of the pilgrimage each year.
An aide then pushed Pope Francis in his wheelchair to the very edge of the lake. The Alberta health department advised pilgrims not to go into the water because of a blue-green algae or cyanobacteria bloom.
Father Cristino Bouvette, an Indigenous priest who helped plan the pope’s prayer, told Catholic News Service that Indigenous people face the four directions of the compass in prayer to remind themselves of “the omnipresence of the Creator and that all creation belongs to him.”
Oblate Father Garry LaBoucane said he has been organizing the pilgrimage for “20 or 30 years” and has been making the annual trip to the lake since he was a boy — about 70 years in total.
“None of us ever dreamed that Pope Francis would come here,” he told CNS. “When we heard he would come to Canada, we knew he wouldn’t come here — there were just too many issues with access and security and facilities.”
But, he said, the “walking together” theme of the papal trip and the commitment to reconciliation has been seen in every preparation meeting and in every interaction between the pilgrims, the police, the clergy, the medics and the traditional healers.
Organizers said about 10,000 people were at the papal event. And, as on every stop during his visit to Canada July 24-29, Indigenous drummers accompanied Pope Francis’ visit to the lake and the Lac Ste. Anne Shrine — but the song Eugene Alexis played on the shore was special and ancient.
According to tradition, the Stoney Nakoda people moved up to the area from the Dakotas because their chief received a vision of the lake in a dream; his people would know they had arrived at the right place when they heard the words of the song Alexis sang whispered on the treetops surrounding the lake.
Saying that “all of us need the healing that comes from Jesus, the physician of souls and bodies,” Pope Francis prayed with thousands of pilgrims gathered on benches in the shrine.
“Lord, as the people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee were not afraid to cry out to you with their needs, so we come to you this evening, with whatever pain we bear within us,” he said. “We bring to you our weariness and our struggles, the wounds of the violence suffered by our Indigenous brothers and sisters.”
“In this blessed place, where harmony and peace reign, we present to you the disharmony of our experiences, the terrible effects of colonization, the indelible pain of so many families, grandparents and children,” he continued. “Help us to be healed of our wounds.”
He prayed to Jesus for “the intercession of your mother and your grandmother.”
He addressed the grandmothers present in the crowd, too, saying their hearts “are springs from which the living water of faith flowed.”
“I am struck by the vital role of women in Indigenous communities,” the pope said. “They occupy a prominent place as blessed sources not only of physical but also of spiritual life.”
The 85-year-old pope, who has spoken often of the love and wisdom of his Grandmother Rosa, told the pilgrims that it was from her that “I first received the message of faith and learned that the Gospel is communicated through loving care and the wisdom of life.”
“Faith rarely comes from reading a book alone in a corner; instead, it spreads within families, transmitted in the language of mothers, in the sweetly lyrical accents of grandmothers,” the pope said.
With the suffering of Canada’s First Nation, Inuit and Métis people never far from his mind, Pope Francis noted how the Lac Ste. Anne pilgrimage has brought different people together in peace and harmony for decades.
Speaking the day after solemnly apologizing for the role Catholics in Canada played in running residential schools, tearing Indigenous children from their families and cultures, Pope Francis presented another side of the church’s history with Indigenous people.
“At the dramatic time of the conquest, Our Lady of Guadalupe transmitted the true faith to the Indigenous people, speaking their own language and clothed in their own garments, without violence or imposition,” he said.
And many missionaries helped preserve Indigenous languages and cultures by making grammar books, dictionaries and catechisms in the local languages, he said.
“Part of the painful legacy we are now confronting stems from the fact that Indigenous grandmothers were prevented from passing on the faith in their own language and culture,” the pope said.
Gathered on the lakeshore, “immersed in creation,” he said, “we can also sense another beating: the maternal heartbeat of the earth. Just as the hearts of babies in the womb beat in harmony with those of their mothers, so in order to grow as people, we need to harmonize our own rhythms of life with those of creation, which gives us life.”
Currents News Staff
It was a special delivery in the middle of a church parking lot. Paramedics in Tennessee jumped into action to help an expectant mother deliver her baby responding to a 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning call.
Critical Care Paramedic Fabian Oden was the one who caught the baby girl as it was born. In total four volunteer firefighters from the Maury County Department went on the call.
He says it was a very unusual situation but 911 operators helped the family get situated before they got there. After the baby was delivered, she was taken to the hospital along with her mother.
The father Jimmy Lee Farnsworth says they brought Kyler Shaydin home from the hospital: a healthy baby who was happy to meet her siblings.
By Cindy Wooden
EDMONTON, Alberta (CNS) — While presented as missionary work, the operation of residential schools by Catholics in Canada was actually an attempt to impose European culture on Canada’s Indigenous people, Pope Francis said.
“One cannot proclaim God in a way contrary to God himself,” the pope said July 25 at Edmonton’s Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples.
Several of the First Nation, Inuit and Métis parishioners of Sacred Heart and many of their parents and grandparents were forced by the Canadian government to attend residential schools, which were set up to force the Indigenous to adopt European languages, culture and forms of Christianity.
“If we think of the lasting pain experienced in these places by so many people,” the pope said, “we feel nothing but anger and shame.”
“Nothing can ever take away the violation of dignity, the experience of evil, the betrayal of trust,” suffered by the students, he said. And nothing can “take away our own shame as believers.”
The pope did not mention the physical and sexual abuse many Indigenous people said they endured in the schools; rather, he focused on the church’s complicity in trying to suppress Indigenous identity and culture.
“That happened because believers became worldly, and rather than fostering reconciliation, they imposed their own cultural models” on the students, he said.
Unfortunately, he said, “this attitude dies hard, also from the religious standpoint.”
“Indeed, it may seem easier to force God on people, rather than letting them draw near to God,” Pope Francis said. “Yet this never works, because that is not how the Lord operates.”
“He does not force us, he does not suppress or overwhelm; instead, he loves, he liberates, he leaves us free. He does not sustain with his Spirit those who dominate others, who confuse the Gospel of our reconciliation with proselytism,” the pope said.
“While God presents himself simply and quietly,” the pope said, “we always have the temptation to impose him, and to impose ourselves in his name.”
Pope Francis made his early evening visit to the parish — the first officially designated Indigenous parish in Canada — after an emotional morning meeting in Maskwacis, where he apologized to survivors of residential schools.
Candida Shepherd, a member of the parish council, and Bill Perdue, chair of the parish finance committee, formally welcomed the pope. Both are members of the Métis community and described the parish as a place where they could live fully their identity as Indigenous Catholics.
The parish is in a neighborhood where many rely on assistance with food and housing or need healing and liberation from addiction.
Perdue told the pope, “Many of those challenges can be traced back to the legacy of the Canadian Indian residential school system, including those operated by the Roman Catholic Church.”
Pope Francis’ visit, he said, “gives us the opportunity to confront, to understand, to release and to transcend our trauma” and has inspired parishioners to work to make the church “a venue for healing and reconciliation between the Indigenous of this land and all those who choose to come here now and in the future.”
At Sacred Heart, the pope expressed admiration for the many survivors who did not lose their faith and who still go to church.
“I can only imagine the effort it must take for those who have suffered so greatly — because of men and women who should have set an example of Christian living — even to think about reconciliation,” he said.
About 250 people filled the church for the pope’s visit and for prayer and music before he arrived.
A traditional smudge ceremony — a purification ritual with smoldering sage, sweetgrass, cedar and tobacco — also preceded the pope’s arrival at the church, which has a teepee frame over the sanctuary, a teepee tabernacle and a wood altar rising from a root ball.
The church, Pope Francis said, must be a place of reconciliation, a place where all are welcome as they are and where discrimination has no place.
The architecture and furnishings at Sacred Heart reflect both Indigenous wisdom and Christian truths, the pope said.
“Joined to the earth by its roots, a tree gives oxygen through its leaves and nourishes us by its fruit,” he said. At Sacred Heart, “a tree trunk symbolically unites the earth below and the altar on which Jesus reconciles us in the Eucharist in ‘an act of cosmic love’ that ‘joins heaven and earth, embracing and penetrating all creation,’” he said, quoting his encyclical on the environment.
The full reconciliation all people yearn for is found in Christ on the cross, the pope said. “On the cross, Christ reconciles and brings back together everything that seemed unthinkable and unforgivable; he embraces everyone and everything. Everyone and everything!”
The way forward, Pope Francis said, is “to look together to Christ, to love betrayed and crucified for our sake; to look to Christ, crucified in the many students of the residential schools.”
“If we want to be reconciled with one another and with ourselves, to be reconciled with the past, with wrongs endured and memories wounded, with traumatic experiences that no human consolation can ever heal, our eyes must be lifted to the crucified Jesus,” he insisted.
On “the tree of the cross,” he said, “sorrow is transformed into love, death into life, disappointment into hope, abandonment into fellowship (and) distance into unity.”
Currents News Staff
Pope Francis continues his penitential pilgrimage in Canada. The Holy Father celebrated Mass at Sacred Heart Church, the first officially designated Indigenous parish in Canada.
John Allen, Editor at Crux, joined Currents News to discuss the significance of the Mass that displayed Indigenous culture on a grander scale and Jesus’ grandparents.
Pope Francis is holding an open-air Mass in Canada for 65,000 people as he continues the healing process with the Indigenous people.
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Currents News Staff
Tens of thousands filled Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium to join Pope Francis in a Mass celebrating the Feast of Saints Joachim and Anne. Jesus’ grandmother is a widely revered figure among Indigenous Catholics and on this feast day, the Holy Father honored all grandparents saying “we are children of a history that needs to be preserved.”
“Our roots, the love that awaited us and welcomed us into the world, the families in which we grew up, are part of a unique history that preceded us and gave us life,” said Pope Francis.
Tuesday’s Mass comes a day after Pope Francis apologized to Canada’s Indigenous community for the Church’s role in the abuses suffered at residential schools. It’s the reason behind the Holy Father’s penitential pilgrimage.
He told those in the audience to look to Joachim and Anne as a reminder to honor our elders and treasure their presence in order to create a better future.
“A future in which the history of violence and marginalization suffered by our indigenous brothers and sisters is never repeated,” said Pope Francis. “That future is possible if, with God’s help, we do not sever the bond that joins us with those who have gone before us, and if we foster dialogue with those who will come after us.”
Currents News Staff
Health & Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is laying bare the urgency of confronting the growing threat of monkeypox.
Two sources familiar with internal discussions say the white house is working on naming a monkeypox coordinator amid rising case numbers.
“We should absolutely be concerned,” Becerra said. “100 percent concerned.”
Becerra’s words come after the World Health Organization declared the global outbreak a public health emergency of international concern over the weekend. The U.S. hasn’t yet declared it a public health emergency.
“We’re seeing a very unusual event,” said Dr. Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson. “We have known about monkeypox since the 1970’s. But we haven’t seen this level of transmission around the world.”
About two months after the first monkeypox infection in the U.S. was confirmed, the nation’s total cases have risen to about 2,900 and two of those infections were in children. The White House says the total number of cases is likely to go up.
“Would not be surprised if we see an increase in cases as testing becomes more robust,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator.
The Federal government has shipped 300,000 monkeypox vaccines to states and territories as of Friday. The White House says the FDA is working to finalize approval for roughly 800,000 more doses.
Currents News Staff
PROSPECT HEIGHTS — Longtime state Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long — a powerful force in New York politics — died Sunday morning after a long illness. He was 82.
Long is survived by his wife of 59 years, Eileen; nine children; 24 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren, many of whom were with him when he died at his home in Breezy Point.
Long’s endorsement on the Conservative Party ballot helped Republican George Pataki beat three-term Democratic governor Mario Cuomo in 1994. Pataki himself would go on to serve three terms.
“The loss of Mike Long is immeasurable,” New York State Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar said in a statement. “We have lost a good man, a close friend, mentor, and outstanding political leader. A void, for me and many, has been created that cannot be filled.”
For Long, nothing was more important than his Catholic faith, as he told Currents News in a 2019 interview after stepping down as Conservative party chairman.
He grew up in Queens and was a parishioner of Holy Child Jesus Church in Richmond Hill. That’s where his strong Catholic roots were planted.
“I’m not afraid to enunciate my views,” Long said in a 2019 Currents News interview when he was retiring. “I’m not forcing those views on other people, but I think the views the Catholic faith professes, especially on life issues, is very important.”
Long served as a member of the board of directors of the Cathedral Club of Brooklyn and once served as chairman of the board at Holy Angels Catholic Academy in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he and his brother Tom owned Long’s Wines and Liquors.
“We are saddened to read this about our friend and legend, Mike Long. Our prayers and thoughts are with his family,” said Antonio Biondi, Cathedral Club president. “All of us are certainly better people for having known Mike and blessed that God placed him in our lives.”
A champion of the sanctity of life, Long was always forthright in sharing what the Church taught him with friends and family, according to his wife, Eileen.
“He always said to them, ‘You have to do what’s right. Whether anyone’s looking or not, that’s what you have to do,’ ” she said in a 2019 interview.
Visitation will be held at Clavin Funeral Home in Bay Ridge on July 27 and July 28, from 3-7 p.m.
A funeral Mass at Our Lady of Angels in Bay Ridge is scheduled to be celebrated on July 29, at 9:30 a.m.