Pope Francis’ July trip to Canada was born out of his meetings with the nations’ Indigenous people and was planned around encounters with them, and if the pope’s words “have value elsewhere,” like throughout the Americas, all the better, said the director of the Vatican press office.

Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, briefed reporters on July 20 about details of the pope’s visit to Canada from July 24-29. He said the pope planned to deliver his nine speeches and homilies in Spanish during the trip.

Asked if the choice of Spanish was meant to send a message to other Indigenous peoples of North and South America, who often suffered the same forms of colonization, Bruni said Pope Francis would be speaking to the people he met, but he also knows that his words can offer solace to other Indigenous people and a challenge to the broader society.

The trip to Canada will be Pope Francis’ 37th foreign journey as pope and Canada will be the 56th country he has visited since his election in March 2013.

Pope Francis himself described the trip as a “penitential pilgrimage” to express, in person and on Canadian soil, his “indignation, sorrow and shame for all that these people suffered,” Bruni said.

Much of the suffering occurred through forced attendance at residential schools where attempts were made to uproot them from their languages, cultures and spiritualities, and where many students suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Many of the schools were run by Catholic religious orders and institutions.

The main themes likely to be treated by the pope, Bruni said, include the impact of the colonialism of the past and new forms of colonialism on Indigenous communities today as well as the desire of the Catholic Church to walk with the Indigenous communities on a path of truth-seeking, healing and reconciliation.

“These are some of the elements we may find in his words and gestures in the coming days,” Bruni said.

Pope Francis was flying to Edmonton, Alberta, where he was to be greeted on the tarmac by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary May Simon, an Inuk who is Canada’s first Indigenous governor-general. Francis had no official events scheduled for Sunday, giving him time to rest before his meeting Monday with survivors near the site of a former residential school in Maskwacis, where he is expected to deliver an apology.

“This apology validates our experiences and creates an opportunity for the church to repair relationships with Indigenous peoples across the world,” said Grand Chief George Arcand Jr., of the Confederacy of Treaty Six. But he stressed: “It doesn’t end here — there is a lot to be done. It is a beginning.”

ALSO READ WHO declares Monkeypox global health emergency as cases rise