Last winter, Quebec Catholics knelt on ice in Arctic weather to celebrate Mass outdoors after the provincial government sealed church entrances without warning.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops got a hot scolding last week from the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec for what the FPJQ called a “deplorable” decision to bar journalists from this week’s plenary meetings.

The commonplace complaint that the Church exists in a post-Christian society tends to misplace the common sense fact that the Church emerged from, and transformed, pre-Christian society.

This week, our magazine Penance and Progress that commemorates and explores Pope Francis’ penitential pilgrimage to Canada is off the press.

Whatever else the Holy Father’s summer visit to Canada produced, hard data show he created fertile ground on which the process of Indigenous-non Indigenous reconciliation can ably proceed.

Following Pope Francis’ peripatetic apology this summer, and as the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation looms at September’s end, it’s safe to foresee increases in Indigenous “adaptations” of Catholic liturgy.

Since 2020 while our attention has been fixed on living through the COVID pandemic, it seems an “end-demic” of medically delivered death has been raging around us almost unnoticed.

Whether Pope Francis proves correct that the Indian residential school system constituted “genocide,” he erred three times during the concluding media conference for his otherwise near-flawless penitential pilgrimage across Canada.

The muting of approval following Pope Francis’ wholesale, emotional, and historic apology on Canadian soil for the “evil” done to Indigenous people has come in two forms.

The moment of humility and contrition Pope Francis ushers in with his visit to Canada may seem an unpropitious time to remind ourselves how great we art.