Indigenous Canadians were a focus in 2002 visit as well as in 2022
That was just days after my own priestly ordination and marked the beginning of my writing frequent columns for the National Post. Twenty years of blessings on both counts, to be sure, and a certain remarkable continuity. Twenty years later to the hour, the Pope was offering the Holy Mass in Canada, and I was again providing commentary on television.
In 2002, the charismatic colossus of history, John Paul II, gathered 800,000 youth from around the world in a triumphant festival of faith that utterly fascinated the city of Toronto. He sent them out as bold evangelists to be “This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.In 2022, Pope Francis came on what he called a “penitential pilgrimage.” The emphasis was apologizing not evangelizing, and the crowds stayed away in droves.
The greater continuity is in relation to Indigenous peoples and their life in the Catholic Church. The majority of them are Christian and many are Catholic. They are not passive parishioners, only to receive what is proposed to them, but also called to be proclaimers of the gospel in their own distinctive voice. They, too, are included in the “salt of the earth, light of the world” that Jesus speaks of in the Sermon on the Mount. The Canada-Guatemala-Mexico visit of 2002 emphasized just that.
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