On 8 February 2023, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the following four pastoral letters on reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. Intended as a framework for local engagement with Indigenous Peoples, the letters are the fruit of many months of listening, encounter, and dialogue with them, including through Listening Circles, the Indigenous Delegation to the Vatican in April 2022, and Pope Francis’ Apostolic Voyage to Canada in July of the same year.
The Vatican released Pope Francis’s message for the 31st World Day of the Sick, celebrated every year on 11 February, liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Holy Father’s message is entitled: “Take care of him” – Compassion as a synodal exercise of healing. In light of the Church’s synodal journey, Pope Francis invites “all of us to reflect on the fact that it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness.”
The theme for this year is “Do good, seek justice” (Isaiah 1:7). The materials for prayer and reflection have been prepared by the Minnesota Council of Churches (USA), in the aftermath of the 2020 extrajudicial killing of George Floyd and the trial of the police officer responsible. As local Christian communities sought to respond to the anguish of these events, they also recognized their own historical complicity in perpetuating racial injustice. Inasmuch as the Church is summoned to be the sign and instrument of the unity God desires for the whole of His creation (cf. Lumen gentium, 1), the continued divisions between Christians constitute a scandal: we are thus called to repent of our disunity and work together for reconciliation among all peoples.
Next Monday, January 9, on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Archbishop Paul-André Durocher will preside at a solemn Mass in memory of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. All the faithful of the diocese are invited to join him for this moment of prayer in St. Joseph's Cathedral at 7:00 pm.
