healing

The Mass was for couples or families who have suffered the loss of a child in any way, including from miscarriage, illness, abortion, SIDS, or accident, and for those suffering infertility.

This special Mass is for couples who have suffered the loss of a child in any way.

While commentators, politicians and survivors discussed whether Pope Francis’ apology for the Catholic Church’s role in running residential schools was enough, the pope insisted reconciliation requires faith, action and the courage to move forward.

Pope Francis himself described the trip as a “penitential pilgrimage” to express, in person and on Canadian soil, his “indignation, sorrow and shame for all that these people suffered.”

Pope Francis said the church’s involvement in the schools was the reason why he met in late March and early April at the Vatican with “representatives of Indigenous peoples, to whom I expressed my sorrow and solidarity for the harm they have suffered.”

Known as the Catholic Native Boarding School Accountability and Healing Project, or AHP, the effort is helping church institutions learn about their past and aiding Native American communities fill holes in their ancestral history.

The papal commission will be working on establishing survivor support services at the level of each national church according to the instructions found in ‘Vos Estis Lux Mundi.’

“Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle,” which comes out in May, is the result of more than a dozen years of research and oral history interviews.