Pope Francisco His six-day journey began this Sunday Canada after the invitation of Indigenous communities to visit their lands and ask for forgiveness for abuses in catholic apprentice during the call assimilation process,
The Ita Airways Company flight took off from Fiumicino Airport at 9:00 a.m. and would arrive in Edmonton after a journey of more than ten hours.
It is hoped that on this occasion 1984whenever John Paul II visited CanadaFrancis offered the Sunday Angelus prayer at an altitude of 10,000 meters along with a Vatican delegation and about 70 journalists who traveled with him for the trip.
On this occasion it was decided that upon arrival in Edmonton, the 85-year-old pope rests for the whole day, following an official welcome by the Governor General of Canada, Mary Simon, the first indigenous person in the position.
Pope in wheelchair due to mobility problems
Francis, who has reappeared in recent days wheelchair for their sake knee problem What stops him from walking, he will kick off the official agenda on Monday with a visit to a residential school in Maskawasis, where he will meet indigenous peoples – First Nations, Metis and Inuit – and give his first speech, who, like the rest Is will be in Spanish.
According to Truth and Reconciliation Commissionmade up 139 schools financed by the government and mostly administered by the Catholic Church in which About 150,000 indigenous children were placed under house arrest and separated from their families, forced to give up their language, tradition and culture,
In the afternoon he will go to the Church of the Sacred Heart, where he will picket Encounters with Indigenous Populations and accompanied by members of the parish community and there he would bless the image dedicated to Saint Kateri Tekquitha, the first North American indigenous woman recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church.
On 26 July, at Commonwealth Stadium, he will hold a mass celebration for the Catholic community, which represents 44% of the population, and in the afternoon he will visit Lake Saint-Anne, west of Edmonton, a place of pilgrimage and holy. for the native people.
On 27 July he will travel to Quebec, where Will meet Thief governor and Prime Minister Justin TrudeauAnd a day later he would visit the National Sanctuary of Saint-Anne-de-Beaupre, where John Paul II had his first meeting with the indigenous people in 1984.
On the final day, Francis will face the farthest voyage ever made by a pontiff: the Iqaluit, which in the Inuktitut language means “place of many fish”, located 186 miles south of the Arctic Circle and the largest Inuit in Canada. The home of the community. About 4,000 people out of a total of about 8,000 residents.
