Vatican media
Pope Francis said it was not the right time but did not rule out resigning
In his traditional conversation with journalists on the papal plane on his last day in Canada, Pope Francis did not rule out a possible resignation for health reasons. Francisco, who used a wheelchair or crutches throughout the trip, suffered from pain in his right knee that prevented him from walking long distances. Because of this, he canceled international travel and participation in some Catholic rites in the Vatican and Italy.
“I don’t think I can keep up the travel pace like I used to. I believe that with my age and limitations, I need to take it easy to serve the Church. Or, on the contrary, I can think about staying a little more to the side. It’s not a disaster, no. If you can change the pope, that’s no problem,” he said on the plane back to Rome.
While the Pope’s primary mission in Canada was a “pilgrimage of penance” to apologize to indigenous people for the horrific abuse they had endured in Catholic Churchrun boarding schools, it was also a pilgrimage on which the 85 Yearold Francis used her own vulnerability to reclaim the dignity of the elderly in a world increasingly populated by them.
When asked again whether he was thinking of resigning like his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the Pope was again ambiguous.
“Have I ever thought about resigning? The door is open. It’s one of the normal options. But until today I haven’t pushed open that door. I haven’t thought about that possibility. But maybe that doesn’t mean that the day after tomorrow I’ll start too think. But at that moment, honestly, no,” he stressed.
According to the pope, the trip to Canada was “a kind of test”. He admitted he may need to “change the style of his international visits a bit” to “pay off the debts” he owes to some countries.
“I think I’ll have to scale back that effort a bit. Knee surgery can’t be done because of the general anesthesia issue in my case that I had 10 months ago. It took six hours of anesthesia and I still have the marks of it plays with anesthesia and therefore surgery is not convenient. But I will try to keep traveling to be close to people because it is a way of serving,” he added.
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genocide
Regarding forthcoming international trips, the Catholic leader reiterated that this year, in addition to Kazakhstan, he also plans to go to Kyiv, Ukraine, a country that has been at war since February “which would be a smooth trip without much movement” and also to South Sudan:
“It’s a journey that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of the Church of Scotland, all three of them, have to make,” he explains.
Francis also spoke again about the murder of thousands of Indigenous Canadians in boarding schools and Catholic Church institutions, which he first described as “genocide.”
“It’s true, I didn’t use the word because it didn’t occur to me, but I did describe what genocide is. I apologized to them for this work and it is genocide,” he said.
“For example, I have condemned the following: taking away children, changing culture, changing mindsets, changing traditions, changing a race, let’s say, an entire culture. If there’s a technical word, it’s genocide, but I didn’t end up using it because it didn’t occur to me. But yes, I can say with certainty that it was a real genocide.
From the late 19th century through the 1990s, the Canadian government sent about 150,000 children to 139 church boarding schools, where they were separated from their family, language and culture. Many were physically and sexually abused by school principals and teachers, and thousands are believed to have died from disease, malnutrition or neglect.