Finalizing a “framework” for a five-year “campaign” to “fundraise” for a cause are hardly the whiz bang motivational words most of us need to roar out of the blocks for 2022. Set alongside, say, “sprinkling pixie dust to miraculously end the pandemic,” they might even appear a little, well, beige.

A national framework for a five-year, $30-million fundraising campaign in aid of healing and reconciliation with residential school survivors and their communities is coming in the new year, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops vice president Bishop William McGrattan has told The Catholic Register.

King’s University College at Western University marked the sixth anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)’s final report with a participatory reading of the 94 Calls to Action Dec. 15.

A national framework for a five-year, $30 million fundraising campaign in aid of healing and reconciliation with residential school survivors and their communities is coming in the new year, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops vice president William McGrattan has told The Catholic Register.

Rescheduling the Indigenous delegations’ visits with Pope Francis in Rome in the midst of the Omicron-fuelled global COVID resurgence is not going to be easy, but the parties are committed to moving forward.

The bags were almost packed, plane reservations made, hotels booked, schedule set. Then came the news on Dec. 7 that the long-planned, much-delayed meeting between Pope Francis and representatives of Canada’s Indigenous communities is on hold again because of COVID concerns.

Postponed, not cancelled, but still heartbreaking. The long planned encounter between Indigenous Canadians and Pope Francis in Rome is being put off while everybody learns more about the Omicron variant of COVID-19, according to a joint release from three Indigenous organizations involved in the trip and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In one hour gathered in a room with Pope Francis, 13 Assembly of First Nations delegates plan to lay down heavy burdens and raise up the hope of nations.

As Indigenous elders, youth, knowledge keepers and residential school survivors prepare for their historic meetings with Pope Francis Dec. 17-20, Regina Archbishop Don Bolen is inviting Canadians to journey with them spiritually.

One month ago, Pope Francis and the Vatican announced an upcoming papal visit to Canada to foster reconciliation with the country’s Indigenous populations in the aftermath of children being found in unmarked, residential school graves.

Indigenous delegates to Rome will have at least three hours of direct, face-to-face conversation with Pope Francis spread over four days, topped off with their presence at an hour-long general audience.

While the upcoming delegation of Indigenous leaders and Canadian bishops travelling to Rome next month to meet the Pope in Rome is an “important, outward and public sign of a commitment to healing and reconciliation,” Catholics must look inward to answer the call to true healing, said Cardinal Thomas Collins.

Pope Francis will be fully involved in three days of meetings with about 30 Indigenous delegates travelling to Rome to next month in what Canada’s bishops describe as a “significant milestone” in Church reconciliation efforts.

As coincidence would have it, on the same day Pope Francis expressed his willingness to visit Canada to foster reconciliation with Indigenous people, St. Mary’s University and St. Joseph’s College in Alberta jointly hosted an online speaker’s panel called “CatholicismRepentance.”

There has never been a papal visit to anywhere that has been anything like what will unfold when Pope Francis comes to Canada — a papal journey of sorrow, mourning and repentance holding forth a thin candle of hope up against the flood of our own Catholic sins.