Pope Francis admitted on Saturday that he will no longer be able to travel as he used to, due to the pressure on his knee ligaments. his weekly Canadian pilgrimage It’s been “a bit of a test” showing that he should slow down and possibly retire someday.
Speaking to reporters on his way home from northern Nunavut, 85-year-old Francis said he was not considering resigning, but stressed that “the door is open” and there is nothing wrong with a pope’s resignation.
“It’s not strange. It’s not a disaster. You can replace the Pope,” he said as he sat in his plane’s wheelchair at a 45-minute press conference.
Francis said that while he hasn’t considered resigning until now, he has at least realized that he needs to slow down.
GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE/POOL/AFP/Getty Images
“I think at my age and with these limitations, I have to save up (my energy) to be able to serve the church or, on the contrary, consider the possibility of stepping aside,” he said.
After his first voyage, where he used a wheelchair, walker, and cane to get around, sharply limiting his schedule and ability to blend in with crowds, Francis was flooded with questions about the future of his papacy.
He strained his right knee ligaments earlier this year and continuing the laser and magnetic treatment forced him to cancel his trip to Africa scheduled for the first week of July.
The Canada trip was difficult and included several moments where Francis was clearly in pain as he maneuvered to get up and down from chairs.
At the end of his six-day tour of Canada, he appeared cheerful and energetic, despite a long day traveling to the edge of the Arctic on Friday to apologize again to Indigenous peoples for the injustices they suffered at church-run boarding schools.
Francis refused to have surgery on the knee, saying it wouldn’t necessarily help, noting that in July 2021 he had “still scars” of the effects of undergoing more than six hours of anesthesia to remove 13 inches of his large intestine.
“I’ll try to keep traveling and be close to people because I think it’s a way of serving, of being close. But I can’t say much more than that,” he said on Saturday.
In other comments on the papal flight, Francis said that the initiative To eradicate indigenous culture A cultural “genocide” took place in Canada through a church-run boarding school system.
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 ruled in 2015 that the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their homes and their placement in church-run boarding schools constitutes a “cultural genocide” to assimilate them into Christian, Canadians.
“It’s true, I didn’t use this word because I didn’t think of it, but I told about the genocide, didn’t I?” said Francis. “I apologized, I asked for forgiveness for this genocide.”
