ON BOARD THE PAPAL PLANE –
Pope Francis acknowledged on Saturday that he can no longer travel as much as he used to because of stretched knee ligaments, saying his week-long Canadian pilgrimage was a “little test” that showed he needed to slow down and one day possibly retire .
Speaking to reporters on his way home from northern Nunavut, Francis, 85, stressed that he had not considered resigning, but said “the door is open” and there is nothing wrong with a pope stepping down.
“It’s not strange. It’s not a disaster. You can change the pope,” he said while sitting in a wheelchair on a plane during a 45-minute news conference.
Francis said that while he hadn’t considered resigning until now, he realized he had to at least slow down.
“I think that at my age and with these limitations, I should conserve (my energy) to be able to serve the church, or on the contrary, think about the possibility of retiring,” he said.
Francis has been dogged by questions about the future of his pontificate since the first trip, in which he used a wheelchair, walker and cane to get around, sharply curtailing his schedule and ability to mingle with crowds.
He sprained ligaments in his right knee earlier this year and ongoing laser and magnetic therapy forced him to cancel a trip to Africa that had been planned for the first week of July.
The trip to Canada was difficult and included several moments where Francis was clearly in pain as he maneuvered himself into and out of chairs.
At the end of his six-day tour, he appeared in good spirits and energetic despite a long day of travel to the edge of the Arctic on Friday to apologize again to indigenous people for the injustices they suffered in Canada’s church boarding schools.
Francis ruled out having surgery on his knee, saying it would not necessarily help, and noted that he “still has traces” of the effects of undergoing more than six hours of anesthesia in July 2021 to remove 33 centimeters (13 inches) from his colon.
“I’m going to try to keep traveling and being close to people because I think it’s a way of service, to be close. But more than that I can’t say,” he said on Saturday.
In other comments aboard the papal plane Francis:
– I agreed that trying to eliminate indigenous culture in Canada through a church-run school system amounts to cultural “genocide”. Francis said he didn’t use the term during his trip to Canada because it didn’t occur to him. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined in 2015 that forcibly removing Indigenous children from their homes and placing them in church-run boarding schools to assimilate them into Christian Canadians constituted “cultural genocide.”
“It’s true that I didn’t use the word because it didn’t occur to me, but I did describe genocide, didn’t I?” said Francis. “I apologized, I asked for forgiveness for this work, which was genocide.
— Pretends not to oppose the development of Catholic doctrine on the use of contraception. Church teaching forbids artificial contraception. Francis noted that a Vatican think tank recently published the proceedings of a congress discussing changing the church’s absolute no. He emphasized that doctrine can evolve over time and that it is the job of theologians to pursue that development, with the pope ultimately deciding.
Francis noted that church teaching on atomic weapons had been modified during his pontificate to consider not only the use but the very possession of atomic weapons immoral and to consider the death penalty immoral in all cases.
– Confirmed that he hopes to travel to Kazakhstan in mid-September for an interfaith conference where he may meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, who has justified the war in Ukraine. Francis also said he wants to go to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, although no trip has yet been confirmed. He said he hopes to reschedule the trip to South Sudan, which he canceled because of his knee problems. He said the Congo leg of that trip would probably have to be postponed until next year because of the rainy season.
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Associated Press religion coverage is supported through AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. AP bears all responsibility for this content.
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