A few minutes before the scheduled time, Pope Francis landed in Canada for a pastoral trip, during which he will apologize to indigenous peoples for the abuses committed in Catholic residential schools. Waiting for him at Edmonton Airport, Alberta, were Canada’s Governor General Mary May Simon, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Pope, who appeared in good condition, was made to get off the side door of the plane and then transferred to a Fiat 500. His Holiness then remained seated in a wheelchair at the moment of greeting with the Canadian authorities who welcomed him at the I arrive in Edmonton.
He then sat in an armchair in the midst of those of Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and the Governor General of Canada, Mary Simon, and attended the welcome of a delegation of Canadian native peoples.
Bergoglio, in a hangar of the airport structure, listened to the welcome sung by the representatives of the First Nations with the accompaniment of drums. then he saw them one by one, entertaining each other, and exchanging gifts. Here are the presentations between the delegations.
At the end Francesco got up from his chair and stood up, not without difficulty, went to the wheelchair with which he reached the car that is taking him to the seminary in Edmonton, where he will rest in view of tomorrow’s appointments.
Just near Edmonton, the first stage of Francesco’s Canadian journey, already Monday morning, at 10 (it will be 18.00 in Italy) there will be the meeting in the Maskwacis area with the three aboriginal populations. Then in the afternoon, at 4.45 pm, almost one in the morning in Italy, at the church of the Sacred Heart of Edmonton, the parish community, together with other indigenous realities, will meet the Pontiff. As if to say that the road marked for some time must be traveled together by all the pieces that make up Canadian society, civil, political, religious and secular.
In the capital of Alberta, the signs have been announcing the papal visit for days. “Marcher ensemble – Walking together”, this is the theme of Francis’ 37 apostolic journey: walking together, expressed in the two official languages of Canada, French and English, but also by the logo of this journey, a circular crown, conceived and designed by indigenous artist Shaun Vincent. It illustrates the symbols and values of a culture offended and wounded by the process of inculturation wanted over 100 years ago, in the so-called ‘residential schools’, with the aim of integrating indigenous peoples into Canada, a nascent state, but with the results that , last April in the Vatican, they made the Pope express apologies, shame and a request for forgiveness to the indigenous delegations received. The Canadian government today recognizes three aboriginal populations, which represent about 4% of the entire Canadian population, equal to 38 million inhabitants: the members of the First Nations, a term used to indicate those peoples present on the territory of present-day Canada before the arrival of European colonizers; then the Métis, the mestizos, born from the encounter between natives and Europeans; finally the Inuit, or the peoples of the northern arctic lands.