Speaking to reporters while traveling home from northern Nunavut, the 85-year-old Francis stressed that he had not considered resigning, but said “the door is open” and that it was not a bad thing for a pope to step down. “It’s not weird. It’s not a disaster. You can change the pope,” he said while sitting in an airplane wheelchair during a 45-minute news conference. Francis said that while he hadn’t considered quitting until now, he realizes that he should at least slow down. Pope Francis looks on during a press conference on the papal plane on his return flight after visiting Canada on July 29, 2022. GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE/POOL/AFP/Getty Images “I think at my age and with these limitations, I need to conserve (my energy) to be able to serve the church or, instead, consider stepping aside,” he said. Francis was full of questions about his mouse’s future after the first trip in which he used a wheelchair, walker and cane to get around, sharply curtailing his schedule and ability to socialize with crowds. He strained ligaments in his right knee earlier this year, and continued laser and magnetic therapy forced him to cancel a trip to Africa that was scheduled for the first week of July. The trip to Canada was difficult and included several moments when Francis was clearly in pain as he maneuvered himself up and down from chairs. At the end of his six-day tour, he appeared in high spirits and full of energy, despite a long day traveling to the edge of the Arctic on Friday to again apologize to indigenous peoples for the injustices they suffered in Canada’s church-based residential schools. Francis ruled out surgery on his knee, saying it wouldn’t necessarily help and noting that “there are still scars” from the effects of being under anesthesia for more than six hours in July 2021 to have 13 inches of his colon removed. “I’m going to try to keep traveling and being close to people because I think it’s a way of service, to be close. But more than that, I can’t say,” he said Saturday. In other comments on the papal plane, Francis agreed that the attempt to eradicate indigenous culture in Canada through a church-run residential school system amounted to cultural “genocide.”
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 forcibly removing Indigenous children from their homes and placing them in church-based residential schools to assimilate them into Christian Canadians constituted “cultural genocide.” “It’s true that I didn’t use the word because it didn’t occur to me, but I did describe genocide, didn’t I?” said Francis. “I asked for forgiveness, I asked for forgiveness for this work, which was genocide.”