In his traditional chat with reporters on the papal plane on his last day in Canada, Pope Francis did not rule out a possible resignation due to health issues. Using a wheelchair or crutches throughout the trip, Francisco suffers from pain in his right knee that prevents him from walking long distances. For this reason, he has canceled international travel and participation in certain Catholic rites in the Vatican and in Italy.

“I don’t think I can maintain the same pace of movement as before. I believe that with my age and with this limitation, I have to preserve myself a little to be able to serve the Church. Or on the contrary, I can think of staying a little more apart. It’s not a disaster, no. If you can change the pope, that’s no problem,” he said on the plane back to Rome.

While the pontiff’s primary mission to Canada was what he called a “penitential pilgrimage” to apologize to Indigenous peoples for the horrific abuses they had suffered in residential schools run by the Catholic Church, it was also a pilgrimage in which 85-year-old François used his own vulnerability to demand the dignity of older people in a world increasingly populated by them.

When asked again if he was considering stepping down, like his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the pontiff was again ambiguous.

“Have I ever thought about quitting? The door is open. It’s one of the normal options. But, until today, I haven’t pushed that door. I haven’t thought about this possibility. But, maybe that doesn’t mean the day after tomorrow I’ll start thinking. But then, honestly, no,” he said.

According to the pontiff, the trip to Canada was “a kind of test”. He admitted he might need to “change up a bit” the style of his international visits to “pay the debt” he has with certain countries.

“I think we have to limit these efforts a little. The knee operation cannot be done because, in my case, there is the problem of general anesthesia which I underwent 10 months ago. It took six hours of anesthesia and I still have traces of it playing with the anesthesia and that’s why the surgery is not practical. But I will try to continue traveling to be close to people because it is a way of serving,” he added.

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Genocide

Regarding upcoming international travel, the Catholic leader reiterated that he would like to visit kyiv, Ukraine, a country at war since February, in addition to Kazakhstan this year — “which would be a smooth trip, without too much movement” — and also in South Sudan:

“It’s a journey that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of the Church of Scotland, all three together, must take,” he said.

Francis also spoke again about the killing of thousands of Indigenous Canadians in boarding schools and institutions run by the Catholic Church, which he called “genocide” for the first time.

“It’s true, I didn’t use the word because it didn’t cross my mind, but I described what genocide is. I apologized to them for this work, and this is genocide,” he said.

“For example, I condemned this: kidnapping children, changing the culture, changing mentalities, changing traditions, changing a race, let’s say, a whole culture. If there is a technical word it is genocide, but I ended up not using it because it didn’t cross my mind. But, yes, I can safely say yes, it was true genocide.”

From the late 19th century to the 1990s, the Canadian government sent approximately 150,000 children to 139 church-run residential schools, where they were separated from their families, language, and culture. Many suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of principals and teachers, and thousands are believed to have died of disease, malnutrition or neglect.