There are effectively three main stops for Pope Francis while he is Canada this week — Alberta, Quebec City and a brief stop in Iqaluit.
He arrives on Sunday and leaves on Friday with only two major public events.
Most of his time will be spent interacting with various Indigenous communities, including issuing a formal apology for residential schools, rather than drawing massive crowds of the general public.
In 1984, the first papal visit ever to Canada, Pope John Paul II visited Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, Montreal, St. John’s, Moncton, Halifax, Toronto, Midland, Winnipeg/St. Boniface, Edmonton, Yellowknife, Vancouver and Ottawa.
“Chay! With this traditional Huron word of welcome I greet you all,” John Paul II said in Midland. “Here the first Christians of Huronia found a “house of prayer and a home of peace.”
He spoke that day of Joseph Chiwatenhwa, one of the first Huron Christians and Kateri Tekakwitha, an Algonquin and Mohawk woman who became the first Indigenous saint.
In 1987, John Paul II returned to Canada to visit Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territories, a stop that was supposed to happen in 1984 but had to be cancelled due to bad weather.
In that visit, he had another message directed towards Canada’s Indigenous population and the issue of self-determination.
“Today, I pray that the Holy Spirit will help you all to find the just way so that Canada may be a model for the world in upholding the dignity of the Aboriginal peoples,” he said.
Schedule for the visit
Sunday July 24 – Arrives in Edmonton
Monday July 25 – Visits Ermineskin Residential School, Maskwacis, Alberta and Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples, Edmonton
Tuesday July 26 – Mass at Commonwealth Stadium, pilgrimage to Lac St. Anne
Wednesday July 27 – Public address in Quebec City at the Plains of Abraham
Thursday July 28 – Mass at National Shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupré
Friday – July 29 – Private meeting with residential school survivors followed by a public event Iqaluit, Nunavut
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