Pope Francis said his age and difficulty walking ushered in a new, slower phase of his papacy. “I don’t think I can go on traveling at the same rate as before,” the 85-year-old told reporters on the plane back to Rome from a weeklong trip to Canada. The pontiff had visited Canada to apologize for the role of the Catholic Church in schools where indigenous children were abused. In recent months, he has been using a wheelchair, cane or walker due to knee pain caused by a fracture and inflammation of the ligament. “I think that at my age and with this limitation I have to maintain myself a little to be able to serve the Church or decide to step aside,” Francis said. He has previously said he could follow in the footsteps of Pope Benedict, who in 2013 became the first pope in 600 years to step down rather than rule for life. “It’s not strange. It’s not a disaster. You can change the pope,” he said. “The door is open. It’s one of the normal options. Until today, I didn’t use that door. I didn’t think it was necessary to think about that possibility, but that doesn’t mean the day after tomorrow ‘don’t start thinking about it.’ He added: “This trip was a bit of a test. It’s true that I can’t travel in this condition. Maybe I should change the style, travel less, do the trips I promised to do, to be again but the Lord will decide. The door is open.” Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 1:19 Pope apologizes for generations of abuse During his trip to Canada, the Pope donned an indigenous feathered headdress before going on to say that the forced assimilation of indigenous peoples into Christian society has destroyed their cultures and broken up their families. He apologized for the Christian support of the “colonial mentality” of the times” and added: “Shamefully and unequivocally, I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil that so many Christians have committed against indigenous peoples.” More than 150,000 aboriginal children in Canada were forced to attend government-funded Christian schools from the 19th century to the 1970s in an attempt to isolate them from the influence of their homes and cultures in an effort to “Christianize” and assimilate them in mainstream society. .
