Pope Francis at Lac Ste. Anne in Alberta, Canada (Vatican Media)
By Linda Bordoni
Dec 13 2023
The Church in Canada marks the annual National Day of Prayer in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Celebrating the National Day of Prayer in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples, Canadian bishops are asking the faithful to recall Pope Francis’ six-day Pilgrimage of Penance to Canada among the Indigenous Peoples of the nation in July 2022, and in particular, his words of prayer offered at Lac Ste Anne.
The Pope travelled to Lac Ste Anne, the site of one of Canada’s most famous Catholic pilgrimages and a place of spiritual significance for the nation’s Indigenous peoples, on 26 July 2022, the second day of his apostolic visit to the nation.
Called ‘Lake of God’, by the Nakota Sioux and ‘Lake of the Spirit’ by the Cree people, it was named ‘Lac Ste Anne” by Father Jean-Baptiste Thibault, a missionary and the first priest to establish a permanent Catholic mission, in 1842, in Alberta, in this place already considered sacred for generations and known to the indigenous as a place of healing.
Pope Francis celebrated a Liturgy of the Word at the Shrine of Ste Anne, with a crowd of mostly Indigenous people and blessed a bowl of the lake’s water. In his address, he said, “Dear Indigenous brothers and sisters, I have come here as a pilgrim also to say to you how precious you are to me and to the church.”
National Day
The National Day of Prayer in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples has been coordinated since 2002 by the Canadian Catholic Indigenous Council and is celebrated by dioceses across Canada.
The date, Dec 12, is that of the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, who appeared to a humble native peasant, Juan Diego, in Mexico in 1531.
Pope Francis’ prayer
This is Pope Francis’ prayer at Lac Ste Anne:
