Pope Francis Makes His Longest Flight To Canada For Pilgrimage Of Regret

Photo via Vatican News

JAKARTA - Flying from Rome to Canada is not an ordinary journey for Pope Francis. On the plane, it was likely the Pope would endure the pain.

At the age of 85, Pope Francis is now suffering from knee pain which has forced him to use a cane or wheelchair in his recent activities.

And flying from Rome to Canada for 10 hours would be the longest trip the Pope has made since 2019.

He traveled to Canada Sunday July 24 to personally apologize to survivors of decades of abuse in residential schools run by the Catholic Church.

Leaders of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics will be met at Edmonton's international airport by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after a flight from Rome.

Pope will visit Edmonton, Maskwacis, Lac Ste. Anne, Quebec, and Iqaluit in the Canadian Arctic region. He is scheduled to give nine homily and speeches and say two Masses.

The repeated school scandal broke out again last year with the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the former Indian Boarding School in Kamloops in the western Canadian province of British Columbia. The school closed in 1978.

The discovery of the body brought new demands for accountability. Hundreds of unmarked burial sites have been found since then.

Francis was elected pope nearly two decades after the last school closed.

The pope had to cancel trips to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan in early July because of knee problems that forced him to use a wheelchair first and then a cane.