Vatican City: Pope Francis addressed Indigenous people and others attending the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples on Monday as he continues his trip in Alberta. He said he had "come to visit your home, as a friend and a pilgrim in your land, in this church where you gather to praise God as brothers and sisters."

The Pope held the encounter in the western city of Edmonton with parishioners of the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples, which came on the heels of his public apology for the Church’s role in running residential schools.

In his address, Pope Francis expressed his joy for the opportunity to come “as a friend and pilgrim in your land”, adding that his Apostolic Journey to Canada is meant as a concrete sign of his desire to support the process of healing.

The Sacred Heart Church welcomes people from the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities, as well as immigrants from other countries.

The Pope said the parish offers an example of how the Church should be “a house for all… a home where everyone should feel welcome, regardless of past experiences and personal life stories.”

Pope Francis recalled the reason for his “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada.

“It pains me to think that Catholics contributed to policies of assimilation and disenfranchisement that inculcated a sense of inferiority, robbing communities and individuals of their cultural and spiritual identity, severing their roots and fostering prejudicial and discriminatory attitudes; and that this was also done in the name of an educational system that was supposedly Christian.”

Education, added the Pope, should be based on respect and never imposed in a pre-packaged format, but rather undertaken as an adventure to “discover together the mystery of life.”

The Pope then focused on the theme of reconciliation, saying Christ brought a form of reconciliation that goes beyond outward appearances.

“Jesus reconciles us with one another on the cross, on the ‘tree of life’, as the ancient Christians loved to call it.”

That tree of life, said Pope Francis, joins heaven and earth and embraces all Creation, even things that seemed “unthinkable and unforgivable.”

He said indigenous peoples attribute “powerful cosmic significance” to the cardinal points, noting how Sacred Heart Church appropriates that symbolism and gives it a Christological meaning.

“Jesus, through the four extremities of His cross, has embraced the four cardinal points and has brought together the most distant peoples; He has brought healing and peace to all things,” he said.

Recognizing the pain endured by many indigenous peoples and families at the hands of Canada’s residential schools, Pope Francis said he can “only imagine the effort it must take, for those who have suffered so greatly because of men and women who should have set an example of Christian living, even to think about reconciliation.”

“Nothing can ever take away the violation of dignity, the experience of evil, the betrayal of trust. Or take away our own shame, as believers. Yet we need to set out anew, and Jesus does not offer us nice words and good intentions, but the cross: the scandalous love that allows his hands and feet to be pierced by nails, and his head to be crowned with thorns.”

The path forward, said the Pope, is to look together to Christ and to embrace Christ’s gift of reconciliation, “a peace that radiates from the heart of Jesus, a grace which must be sought.”

“If we want to be reconciled with one another and with ourselves, to be reconciled with the past, with wrongs endured and memories wounded, with traumatic experiences that no human consolation can ever heal,” he said, “our eyes must be lifted to the crucified Jesus; peace must be attained at the altar of his cross.”

Pope Francis went on to say that the Church is the “living body of reconciliation”, since she is the one body in which Christ has reconciled us.

He said the Church can never lead people to Christ by imposing Him through proselytism. Rather, Jesus must be “preached as He desires, in freedom and charity.”

The Church, he added, must be a place of welcome in which the Holy Spirit fosters the healing of wounded memories, which he said should be carried out at the local level in praying and sharing life with one another.