Most Holy Father,
It is with great joy and profound gratitude that I greet your presence in Canada on behalf of all my brother bishops. Your positive response to our invitation and your presence here today in Quebec are for us a much appreciated testimony of affection.
This “Visitation” for the Catholic Church in Canada takes place in the context of reconciliation with our native sisters and brothers. Already, some of us have met you in Rome with the delegations from the First Nations, Métis and Inuit who have come to visit you near the seat of Saint Peter. Your journey here, in turn, expands that path of reconciliation for all of us. Your mere presence is already a promise of alliance, a commitment to “walk together” to live fraternally on a common ground. Your presence is a support to your brother bishops and to their collaborators, collaborators, in the sustained efforts of evangelization and reconciliation.
In the Gospel account, if Elizabeth recognizes at the sight of Mary who visits her, the mother of her Lord, we recognize in seeing you, most Holy Father, the mercy of the Lord who offers himself to us. We are well aware that your presence is synonymous with great personal physical effort for you; we also know how much the encounters experienced are for us the expression of a mutual effort to be supported, to “walk together” and open up new horizons with our communities.
May Mary’s canticle of thanksgiving, pronounced before her cousin Elizabeth, find a contemporary echo in these moments spent with you among us, on the soil of all these nations of which we are the pastors. If Mary said: “He leaned over his humble servant: henceforth, all ages will call me blessed.” So with her, we also blessed, we add: the mighty did wonders for us: Holy is his name!
Fr1
