Francis has said his weeklong visit, which begins Sunday, is a "penitential pilgrimage" to beg forgiveness on Canadian soil for the "evil" done to Native peoples by Catholic missionaries.

It follows his April 1 apology in the Vatican for the generations of trauma Indigenous peoples suffered as a result of a church-enforced policy to eliminate their culture and assimilate them into Canadian Christian society.

Francis' tone of personal repentance has signalled a notable shift for the papacy, which has long acknowledged abuses in the residential schools and strongly asserted the rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples.

But past popes have also hailed the sacrifice and holiness of the European Catholic missionaries who brought Christianity to the Americas — something Francis, too, has done but isn't expected to emphasize during this trip.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Canadian Jesuit who is a top papal adviser, recalled that early on in his papacy, Francis asserted that no single culture can claim a hold on Christianity, and that the church cannot demand that people on other continents imitate the European way of expressing the faith.

"If this conviction had been accepted by everyone involved in the centuries after the ‘discovery' of the Americas, much suffering would have been avoided, great developments would have occurred and the Americas would be all-around better," he told The Associated Press in an email.

The trip won't be easy for the 85-year-old Francis or for residential school survivors and their families. Francis can no longer walk without assistance and will be using a wheelchair and cane because of painful strained knee ligaments.

Trauma experts are being deployed at all events to provide mental health assistance for school survivors, given the likelihood of triggering memories.

"It is an understatement to say there are mixed emotions," said Chief Desmond Bull of the Louis Bull Tribe, one of the First Nations that are part of the Maskwacis territory where Francis will deliver his first sweeping apology on Monday near the site of a former residential school.

The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse were rampant in the state-funded, Christian schools that operated from the 19th century to the 1970s. Some 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to attend in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes, Native languages and cultures.

The legacy of that abuse and isolation from family has been cited by Indigenous leaders as a root cause of the epidemic rates of alcohol and drug addiction on Canadian reservations.

"For survivors from coast to coast, this is an opportunity — the first and maybe the last — to perhaps find some closure for themselves and their families," said Chief Randy Ermineskin of the Ermineskin Cree Nation.

"This will be a difficult process but a necessary one," he said. Continue reading

"As the pope has often repeated, it is not for us to serve the economy, but for the economy to serve us," said Father Guerrero at a symposium on Tuesday in Rome.

Guerrero, 63, is the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. He was appointed as the Vatican's financial czar in November 2019, filling the post left vacant by Australian Cardinal George Pell.

"The economy is not the primary activity of the Roman Curia. But it helps us to make it possible to carry out the mission of the Curia. It must do so without losing the credibility of the Church's mission," Father Guerrero said.

Asked to comment on the consequences Curia reform will likely have on the economic bodies of the Holy See, the Spanish Jesuit insisted on the need for transparency in the use of funds.

"And when it is necessary not to make public the use of certain funds, the request must be submitted to a special commission which will then control the use of the sum granted," he detailed.

He pointed to the existence of this commission which Pope Francis instituted in September 2020 to manage the exceptions to the rule of budgetary transparency now obligatory in the Roman Curia.

Several top Curia officials also attended the symposium.

Among them was Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, one of the leading architects of the Curia's reform.

"We are living in an era of change," he underlined.

"We are no longer in a regime of Christendom. That means we are no longer in a time of doctrine, but of proclaiming the faith," said the 74-year-old Italian, one of the pope's closest aides.

During his address, Cardinal Semeraro emphasised that the Curia must be seen as a "structure of service", not one of power.

"Being at the service means being part of an adaptable, flexible reality," he said.

The remark was seen as a direct criticism of any form of rigidity or resistance to change detected in some Vatican officials.

Sources

• La Croix International

Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Cardinal Tagle, says Francis "is not against efficiency and methods" that could help the church's missionary activities.

"He is warning us about the danger of 'measuring' church mission using only the standards and outcomes predetermined by the models or schools of management, no matter how good and useful these may be.

"The most efficiently run church organization may end up being the least missionary."

Mission societies raise awareness and promote prayer for the missions and also raise money to fund projects in some of the world's poorest countries. Francis's message warned the societies not to make fundraising their first priority.

Francis sees a danger in donations becoming "merely funds or resources to be used, rather than tangible signs of love, of prayer, of sharing the fruits of human labor.

"The faithful who become committed and joyful missionaries are our best resource, not money per se, Tagle says.

"It is also good to remind our faithful that even their small donations, when put together, become a tangible expression of the Holy Father's universal missionary charity to churches in need. No gift is too small when given for the common good."

Francis also warned of "pitfalls and pathologies" that may threaten the missionary societies' unity in faith, such as self-absorption and elitism.

"Instead of leaving room for the working of the Holy Spirit, many initiatives and entities connected to the church end up being concerned only with themselves," he said in his message to the missionaries.

"Many ecclesiastical establishments, at every level, seem to be swallowed up by the obsession of promoting themselves and their own initiatives, as if that were the objective and goal of their mission."

Tagle says God's gift of love is at the heart of the church and its mission in the world, "not a human plan." If the actions of the church are separated from this root, they "are reduced to mere functions and fixed plans of action.

"God's surprises and 'disturbances' are considered destructive of our prepared projects. For me, to avoid the risk of functionalism, we need to return to the spring of the church's life and mission: God's gift in Jesus and the Holy Spirit," he says.

In calling for church organizations to "break every mirror in the house," Tagle says Francis is also denouncing a "purely pragmatic or functional view of mission".

This view leads to narcissistic behavior that makes the mission more about one's success and achievements "and less about the good news of God's mercy."

Francis wants the Church to embrace the challenge of helping "our faithful see that faith is a great gift of God, not a burden," and it is a gift to be shared.

Source

• Catholic San Francisco
• UCA News
• Images: Catholic Mission

The opportunity to travel from the hustle of big city life to the quiet beautiful mountainous area of eastern Kentucky - to deepen my Catholic faith, experience Christian community with other young adults from around the U.S., and help the rural poor - was an offer this adventurous soul jumped at!

Through a wonderful program which the Glenmary Home Missioners still offer, I and about 20 other guys, under the supervision of two skilled Glenmary brothers, worked on improving impoverished homes of several mountain families. Then in the evenings, we participated in wonderful spiritual retreats.

Now fast-forward 40 years.

Having recently retired after 17 years as a pastoral associate in Baltimore, I contacted Glenmary to see if I could volunteer once again. Father Vic Subb, pastor of Holy Family parish and Divine Savior mission in Lafayette and Celina, Tenn. respectively, warmly invited me to take up residence at his home and assist him in ministering to the folks in his neck-of-the-woods.

And so I packed my bags and headed south, driving over 700 miles to Holy Family and Divine Savor in Tennessee - which are the only established Catholic congregations within a five county radius.

For nearly six weeks, I took the Eucharist to homebound and nursing home parishioners, assisted with R.C.I.A., gave two social justice and peace presentations, and delivered a weekly Scripture reading and sermon on the local country radio station.

It was all a very enriching experience of sharing and receiving God's love.

But my most insightful experiences were ministering to prisoners and migrant workers.

Every Friday at the Macon County Jail, Fr. Subb, along with a few volunteers including myself, celebrated the Eucharist with 20 prisoners.

Their prayerful reverence and sincere reflections concerning the proclaimed Scriptures deepen my understanding that active faith in God's love and mercy is greater than our sins, and as Jesus often taught, is our very salvation (Luke 19:1-10).

On several occasions, I traveled to migrant worker camps in Tennessee and Kentucky with Fr. Subb - who for years has traversed many country back roads to befriend and minister to numerous Mexican and Central American farm workers.

During a visit one evening, I asked them to tell me about their work harvesting tobacco.

They explained that for 11 hours a day, six days a week, they work non-stop - except for lunch - cutting, stacking, hanging and stripping this hazardous crop - dangerous to workers and users alike.

These very poor migrant workers labor so hard in dangerous conditions, because at about $11 an hour, they make 11 times what they would earn back home.

While millions of migrant workers pick our fruits and vegetables, these men - migrant women also work the fields - explained that tobacco was the only farm job available to them.

Although all of these men have legal worker visas, millions of other migrant workers throughout the U.S. remain in the undocumented shadows, partly because the federal government refuses to issue enough worker visas each year.

Comprehensive, fair immigration reform legislation is sorely needed and long overdue.

Now back home in Maryland, where my county and all of the neighboring counties have Catholic churches, I realize the final lesson I learned in mission country USA is that in our very secular nation and world, mission country actually starts in our own families, neighborhoods and parish congregations.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan and parish gatherings. To invite Tony, contact him at tmag@zoominternet.net.

After the war, Pope Benedict XV "was prompt in indicating how the missionary world must change paths, abandoning the colonial ideology in which it had been lulled and promoting autonomy, independence and ecclesial self-governance in all the areas outside Europe," said the Vatican secretary of state.

Speaking at a conference July 12 anticipating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Parolin looked at the wide-ranging impact of the war and its aftermath on the political map of Europe, and how that affected the fates of peoples in the Middle East and in the countries of what would become the Soviet Union.

But he also spoke about Benedict's 1919 apostolic letter Maximum Illud on the Church's missionary activity.

In conjunction with the document's centenary, Pope Francis has asked all Catholics to celebrate a special "missionary month" in October 2019.

Announcing the special commemoration, Francis had said, "In 1919, in the wake of a tragic global conflict that he himself called a ‘useless slaughter,' the pope recognized the need for a more evangelical approach to missionary work in the world, so that it would be purified of any colonial overtones and kept far away from the nationalistic and expansionistic aims that had proved so disastrous."

"May the approaching centenary of that letter serve as an incentive to combat the recurring temptation lurking beneath every form of ecclesial introversion, self-referential retreat into comfort zones, pastoral pessimism and sterile nostalgia for the past," Francis said. "Instead, may we be open to the joyful newness of the Gospel."

World War I marked the end of the "state church," which was particularly strong in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Parolin said in his lecture in the northern Italian city of Aquileia.

The government had power in the appointment of bishops and controlled the seminaries and a variety of religious institutions, all of which fed into a mentality that emphasized national belonging over the universality of the Catholic faith, the cardinal said.

Maximum Illud, he said, was "the manifesto of a missionary and political revolution whose importance still has not been recognized as it deserves."

"In the encyclical," the cardinal said, "the pope ordered European missionaries to free themselves of nationalism, of the idea of European superiority over the peoples then seen as subordinate, to promote local languages rather than the language of the conquerors, (and) to train and to value indigenous clergy so that ‘one day they will be able to take up the spiritual leadership of their people.'" Continue reading

• Image: NCR