CTVNews – While excited to land in Rome for a long-anticipated meeting with Pope Francis, Taylor Behn-Tsakoza also knows the responsibility that awaits her.
“It’s hard to capture youth perspective from across the nation, but I’m going to try my best to bring what I know and my experiences to our one-hour meeting on Thursday with the Pope,” she told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday.
A member of Fort Nelson First Nation in British Columbia, Behn-Tsakoza is one of two youth representatives taking part in a series of discussions between Indigenous delegates and the pontiff this week.
After planned meetings in December were postponed due to concerns around the then-emerging Omicron variant of COVID-19, Indigenous delegates on Monday held the first of a series of meetings with the Pope to discuss reconciliation with First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities in Canada. Thirty-two Indigenous elders, leaders, survivors and youth are taking part in the meetings at the Vatican, organized by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which also is covering the travel costs. A handful of bishops are also attending.
‘Let’s think big’: Historic Indigenous delegation arrives in Rome to meet Pope Francis
Global News – Wilton Littlechild has spent months preparing for what could be the “biggest birthday present” of his life.
On Friday, April 1, as he turns 78, the lawyer and activist from Ermineskin Cree Nation will take part in a private audience with Pope Francis as part of the long-awaited Indigenous delegation from Canada to the Vatican.
“It will be very emotional I’m sure for me, for a number of reasons, not just because it’s my birthday,” the Alberta representative told Global News in the days before his departure. “To finally see the day that we sit by each other — let’s think big.”
‘Picking up the pieces’: Indigenous delegates go to Rome to press Pope for residential school apology
CBC – National Inuit leader Natan Obed heads into a private meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Monday with a simple message: the Holy See must apologize for the church’s role in residential schools in order to help the survivors bear the burdens of the past inflicted on the present.
The president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the national organization representing Inuit, spent his career hearing about the harm caused by the institutions.
He said his father attended a non-Catholic residential school in Newfoundland, so he’s also lived with the effects of intergenerational trauma.
“It has impacted my life greatly,” Obed said. “I understand the necessity of further healing.”
