Pope Francis has arrived in Canada, a "penitential" journey which - as announced to the 80 journalists accompanying the flight from Rome - will also be among the aboriginal communities victims of assimilation policies and abuses in government residential schools, largely governed by the Catholic Church.

He also spoke of Grandparents' Day, “those who passed on to us history, traditions, habits. Young people must keep in touch with their grandparents, take back the roots, not to stay there, but to carry them forward in the flowers and fruits "." I always remember that poem by Bernardes: 'everything that the tree has in bloom comes from that that he has buried. They are the grandparents "." And I would also like to remember, as a religious - he said -, the old and the old religious, the grandparents of consecrated life. Please - he recommended -, do not hide them, they are the wisdom of a religious family, so that the new men and women religious, novices, novices may have contact with them. They will give us a lot of life experience that will help us a lot, a lot to go forward ”.

The pontiff in Edmonton, the capital of the western province of Alberta, was welcomed by the Governor General of Canada, Mary Simon, and by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

(Unioneonline / ss)

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