Beginning March 28, residential school survivors, Indigenous elders and youth will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican as a prelude to a papal trip to Canada. The Indigenous want an apology, on Canadian soil, for historic abuses they suffered at government-owned residential schools, many of which were run by the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis again condemned Russia’s war on Ukraine, calling it a “senseless massacre” and “sacrilegious” attack on human life.
Ukraine’s first lady appealed to the World Council of Churches to “be the voice of those who suffer from war today.”
The Vatican published Pope Francis’ calendar for Holy Week and Easter, which includes the Way of the Cross at Rome’s Colosseum for the first time in two years.
Nine years after taking office, Pope Francis promulgated his constitution reforming the Roman Curia, a project he began with his international College of Cardinals shortly after taking office in 2013.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said March 17 that the U.S. is sending an additional $186 million in humanitarian aid to help the more than 3 million refugees who have fled from Ukraine to neighboring countries since Russia attacked the East European nation Feb. 24.
While bishops in Ukraine and Russia are grateful Pope Francis will consecrate their nations to Mary, other Catholics are eagerly awaiting the text of the pope’s prayer to see if he does it “correctly.”
A Ukrainian priest described escaping from his bombed-out parish in Mariupol and said he still hopes some Catholics will survive the relentless Russian onslaught.
Pope Francis has asked bishops around the world to join him March 25 in consecrating Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, something bishops in every part of the globe had started announcing the minute they heard what the pope had planned.
Continuing the mission entrusted to him by Pope Francis, Cardinal Michael Czerny visited Slovakia and a Ukrainian border town to convey the pope’s closeness to victims of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
