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Pope Francis did not avoid talking about his knee problems during a brief press conference after his trip to Malta. His difficulty walking throughout the trip and the fact that he had to use an elevator to board his plane did not go unnoticed.
“My health is a bit “capricious” because I have this knee problem that makes it difficult to walk,” the Holy Father said. “It’s annoying, but it’s getting better. At least I can walk. Two weeks ago I couldn’t do anything.”
The pontiff took a moment to address the migration crisis in Southern Europe. He reiterated the need for neighboring countries such as Malta, Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Spain to develop a shared policy on receiving migrants to managing the crisis.
“We forget that Europe has been made with migrants, but that’s the way things are,” Pope Francis said. “But at least we should not leave all the burden to these bordering countries that are so generous. Malta is one of them.”
There was also talk of a possible papal trip to Ukraine. While the pontiff did not deny the possibility, he said that no decision has been made.
“It is there, as one of the proposals that came to me,” the pontiff said, “but I don’t know if it can be done, if it is suitable to do it, and if doing it will be good. If it is fitting, I will have to do it.”
Pope Francis was very critical of the rise in arms manufacturing in response to the war in Ukraine, insisting that military spending does not build peace.
“Investing in weapons,” the Holy Father said. ‘”But we need them to defend ourselves.’ But this is the logic of war. I am pained by what is happening today, we do not learn. May the Lord have mercy on us, on all of us. We are all guilty.”
The Holy Father also revealed that another meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill was being prepared, and that it would most likely take place in the Middle East.
“If a man wants to be always in God’s company, he must pray regularly and read regularly. When we pray, we talk to God; when we read, God talks to us.”
As the war in Ukraine enters its seventh week, prayers continue for those affected by the fighting. A parish in the Diocese of Brooklyn is planning a big prayer event and it has special meaning for its parishioners.
Pastor of Church of Annunciation, Msgr. Jamie Gigantiello, joined Currents News to talk about the prayer service and how you can take part in the event.
The Church of Annunciation is on 259 North 5th street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Lenten reflection, on Tuesday April 5, will feature music by Al Barbarino. It starts at 7 p.m. and the actual prayer begins at 8 p.m. with guest speaker Jason Jones.
“For the deplorable conduct of those members of the Catholic Church,” the Holy Father told Indigenous representatives April 1, “I ask for God’s forgiveness, and I want to say to you with all my heart: I am very sorry.”
Saying he was impressed by their devotion to St. Anne, the grandmother of Jesus, the centerpiece of the popular Lac Ste. Anne Pilgrimage, scheduled this year for July 25-28, Pope Francis told them, “This year, I would like to be with you in those days.”
The Shrine of St. Anne, on Lac Ste. Anne, is located in central Alberta, not far from Edmonton.
Gathered in the frescoed Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace, representatives of the Métis, Inuit and First Nations shared their prayers, music, dance and gifts with the pontiff.
Addressing all the delegates and their supporters at the end of the week, Pope Francis recalled that several delegates compared their communities to branches, growing in different directions, buffeted by wind, but still living because they are attached to the trunk and the tree’s deep roots.
“Your tree, which bears fruit, has suffered a tragedy, which you told me about in these past few days: uprooting,” he said. The normal transmission of language, culture and spirituality from one generation to the next “was broken by colonialization, which, without respect, tore many” from their homelands and tried to force them to adopt other ways.
Catholics could not use trying to evangelize the Indigenous as an excuse of running the schools because “the faith cannot be transmitted in a way contrary to the faith itself,” the pontiff said.
The Gospel calls Christians “to welcome, love, serve and not judge,” he said, and it is “a frightening thing” when, in the name of that faith, Christians act the opposite.
“Through your voices,” he told the delegates, “I have been able to touch with my own hands and carry within me, with great sadness in my heart, the stories of suffering, deprivation, discriminatory treatment and various forms of abuse suffered by many of you, particularly in residential schools.”
Pope Francis said it is “chilling” to think of how much thought and effort went into designing and running a system aimed at instilling “a sense inferiority” in the students and the attempt “to make someone lose his or her cultural identity, to sever their roots, with all the personal and social consequences that this has entailed and continues to entail: unresolved traumas that have become intergenerational traumas.”
“I feel shame — sorrow and shame — for the role that a number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had in all these things that wounded you, in the abuses you suffered and in the lack of respect shown for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values,” he said.
Those values were on display during the meeting in the Apostolic Palace, which began with representatives offering their prayers.
First Nations Elder Fred Kelly, wearing a feathered headdress and offering a prayer in Nishnawbe and English, prayed for the gifts of “love, kindness, respect, truth, kindness and humility from the one Creator.”
Métis Elder Emile Janvier, a residential school survivor, recited his prayer in Dene-Michif, asking the Creator for healing of “the hurts of the past” and for strength in moving forward “in forgiveness and reconciliation.”
Marty and Lizzie Angotealuk, members of the Inuit delegation, led the singing of the Lord’s Prayer in Inuktitut.
During the individual meetings earlier in the week, elected leaders of the groups asked Pope Francis for a formal apology for the Catholic Church’s role in suppressing their languages, cultures and spiritualities and, particularly, for the church’s role in running many of the residential schools that were part of the government’s plan of forced assimilation and where many children were emotionally, physically and sexually abused.
The leaders also asked Pope Francis to go to Canada to make that apology and requested his help in getting access to more of the school records so a full history of the schools could be written and so the children in unmarked graves could be identified.
But the major part of the private meetings with the pontiff were devoted to the survivors of residential schools telling their stories.
Pope Francis thanked the delegates for “opening your hearts and for expressing the desire to walk together,” and he assured them that he brought all of their stories to his prayer.
And, he said he looked forward to learning more about them and meeting their families when he visited their lands, but, he said, pointing to the Inuit, “I’m not going in winter.”
Thanking the pope for agreeing to go to Canada, Bishop Raymond Poisson of Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, president of the Canadian bishops’ conference, told Pope Francis, “We are ready today to help you pack your bags!”
The recent history of the Catholic Church, he said, “is marked with the stigma of mistakes and failures to love our neighbor, in particular toward members of those nations who have been present in Canada for centuries.”
An acknowledgment of the church’s failures makes “our desire for reconciliation” even stronger, he said. “Our presence here is a testimony to our commitment for one another and to each other.”
Pope Francis gave each delegation a bronze olive branch as a sign of peace and reconciliation, according to the Canadian bishops’ conference.
The Assembly of First Nations gave the pontiff a liturgical stole, beaded with orange crosses, and a pair of snowshoes made of black ash with caribou and artificial sinew.
The Métis National Council gave him a memory book with the stories of Métis residential school survivors and a letter from Cassidy Caron, council president.
The Inuit gave the pontiff a cross carved from a baleen of a bowhead whale and riveted to a piece of sterling silver and a pouch made from sealskin with an ivory button.