InsightOut: Lessons Learned from Pope Francis’ Penitential Pilgrimage

Darren Dias, OP is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of St Michael’s College and Executive Director of the Toronto School of Theology. His areas of research include interreligious relations, decolonial theology and theological methods.  He served as a CBC commentator during the 2022 Papal visit and also in April 2025 during Pope Francis’ funeral.

Three years ago, in response to TRC Call to Action 58, Pope Francis made his historic penitential pilgrimage to Canada to apologize for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system. National Truth and Reconciliation Day provides us with a moment to think about what was learned during that visit as we continue to work for reconciliation. In conversation with my colleague Prof. Niigaan Sinclair from the University of Manitoba, we came up with a few lessons from Francis’ pilgrimage:

1. Movement to the Peripheries:

Francis’ pilgrimage can be divided into three legs. The first leg in Alberta focussed on the experience of the residential school system and the multigenerational trauma this system caused. It took place on the land that witnessed to generations of violence. The second leg of the journey took place in Quebec City, the centre of political and religious colonial power symbolized by meetings at the Citadelle and the Cathedral respectively. From this historic centre of power Francis went to the periphery of the country, to its northmost territory, Iqaluit, where he ended his visit speaking to the youth.

The movement was from the site of suffering to the centre of colonial political and religious power and then to the future possibilities found at the periphery. Those on the periphery challenge the powerful who hoard to their benefit what should be at the disposal of the common good. Those on the periphery unmask the truth of ideologies that serve the interests of the powerful.

2. Seeing the Face of God in the Other

In his address to ecclesial leaders in Quebec Francis made an anthropological claim about the Other: “build relationships of fraternity with everyone, with Indigenous brothers and sisters, with every sister and brother we meet, because the presence of God is reflected in each of their faces.” This contrasts early European denials of the humanity of Indigenous peoples. This was at the heart of the Valladolid debates of the 16^th century where the Dominicans’ Bartolome de las Casas argued that God’s presence was indeed reflected in the faces of the Indigenous.

3. Memory as antidote for Indifference:

In his apology Francis connected memory and land to forgetfulness and indifference. “These are lands that speak to us; they enable us to remember.” In the face of assimilationist policies aimed at erasing memory, the land bears witness to the violent appropriation of the land and the extraction of its resources and peoples. For Francis, drawing on Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel, not to remember leads dangerously to indifference, which is the opposite of both love and life. The monition against indifference is addressed to settlers of the past whose indifference permitted abuses in the schools but also indifference to the injustices experienced to this day as a result of ongoing colonization.

4. Care for Creation:

In contrast to Western neo-liberal capitalist relations with the earth, which can be described as exploitative and extractivist, Francis drew attention to the wisdom of Indigenous ways of relating to the earth, and to the deep relationship of the earth to life itself. In contrast to the alienation from the land and its exploitation in Western cultures and economies, Francis noted that what can be learned from Indigenous knowledge and wisdom can promote integrity and healing. Francis said that love for the earth and fellow creatures leads to love of the Creator.

5. Ongoing Colonization

In speaking about ongoing forms of colonization, Francis spoke less specifically to the Canadian context but more generally about the colonizing ideology of global neo-liberal capitalism. Addressing political leaders Francis warned, “That ‘history of suffering and contempt’, the fruit of the colonizing mentality, ‘does not heal easily.’ Indeed, it should make us realize that ‘colonization has not ended; in many places it has been transformed, disguised and concealed’ (Querida Amazonia, 16)…yet today too, there are any number of forms of ideological colonization that clash with the reality of life, stifle the natural attachment of peoples to their values, and attempt to uproot their traditions, history and religious ties.”  Francis lamented that the ideological colonization of today looks only to immediate satisfactions, is intolerant of difference, and neglects the duty of care for the most vulnerable who suffer “amid general indifference.”

6. Resistance

On the last stop of his penitential pilgrimage Pope Francis addressed both the elders and the youth of Iqaluit. Referencing the biblical story of Naboth, Francis praised those who refused to give their inheritance to those in power: “Those forced assimilations evoke another biblical story, that of the just man Naboth (cf. 1 Kings 21), who refused to give the vineyard he had inherited from his ancestors to those in power, who were willing to use every means to snatch it from him.” After centuries of assimilationist policies, encouraged and sustained by Christian missionaries, Francis praised Indigenous people who resisted these polices, often at great personal expense. The perseverance and resilience of previous generations witnesses to life in the face of a culture of death.

7. Reconciliation as a Process

Francis began the long-awaited apology saying that it was but the “first step” on his “penitential pilgrimage.” Francis framed the visit not as a singular action but a process that unfolds over time and space, like the sacrament of reconciliation itself, as a process of contrition, apology, penance, and finally absolution.

8. Action in the Face of Injustice

Francis recalled his first meeting with the Indigenous delegation before his visit: “In Rome, after I listened to your stories, I stated that ‘any truly effective process of healing requires concrete actions.’” While Francis did not offer a concrete action plan, he did commit local churches to figure this out: “gestures and visits can be important, but most words and deeds of reconciliation take place at the local level, in communities like this, where individuals and families travel side-by-side, day by day. To pray together, to help one another, to share life stories, common joys and common struggles: this is what opens the door to the reconciling work of God.”

Read other InsightOut posts.