Jubilee Year 2025

As members of all three Indigenous delegations in Rome to meet with Pope Francis toured the Anima Mundi collection at the Vatican Museums, there were mixed feelings. Some were in awe, while some wanted to know how these examples of Indigenous culture ended up half a world away from where they were made.

The unprecedented meetings this week between Pope Francis and three Canadian delegations of Indigenous people in Rome are big news. Thirteen camera crews and dozens of journalists — Italian, American, British and Canadian — greeted Metis National Council president Cassidy Caron after the MNC delegation of nine came out to St. Peter’s Square after their hour-long encounter with the bishop of Rome.

Hard truths and deep prayer marked the Metis delegation’s hour with Pope Francis, said bishops who were in the room when nine Metis elders and residential school survivors spoke with the Pope.

After being greeted individually at the door of the papal library by Pope Francis, Inuit delegates proceeded to light the qulliq they had brought with them — a soapstone lantern that burns blubber, and a symbol of warmth and life in Inuit culture.

ROME COVERAGE: CANADIAN INDIGENOUS MEET WITH POPE FRANCIS

The long-awaited meeting between Pope Francis and representatives of Canada’s Indigenous communities in Rome promises to be a history-making occasion — and The Catholic Register is there to provide readers comprehensive coverage.

The Register’s associate editor, Michael Swan, is on the scene in Rome during the meetings which begin with individual Indigenous delegations March 28 and end with a final papal audience for all participants April 1.

Check this page for daily updates.

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PHOTOS

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VATICAN CITY -- Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan told Pope Francis that the Catholic Church in Poland is continuing its efforts to assist the countless refugees from Ukraine fleeing Russia's destructive war in the country.

Led by two fiddlers playing the Red River Jig to the amazement of tourists, Metis delegates skirted past St. Peter’s Square on their way out from an hour-long meeting with Pope Francis before meeting the assembled press from Rome and Canada.

Prolific Blackfoot painter Kalum Teke Dan’s latest residency has been at St. John XXIII School in Calgary, where for over a month he’s been sharing his art and culture with students from kindergarten to Grade 9.

Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year C) April 3 (Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11)

God can and does act in surprising and even shocking ways and cannot be confined by dogmatic formulas or learned treatises. Did calling one individual — Abraham — and staking everything on his fidelity make sense? Who would have ever predicted or reasoned the burning bush, the plagues of Egypt, the exodus, the giving of the commandments on Sinai and the entrance into the Promised Land?

On March 1, I was mesmerized by an explosion. Verified footage of a Russian missile striking Freedom Square in Kharkiv, Ukraine, transformed a normal city scene into a giant fireball. The speed of its violence arrested me. “Where was the missile?” I thought. It only became visible to me as I looked for it in the replay. The long and deadly cylinder streaks downwards out of the sky and into the image a millisecond before transforming itself into death and destruction.