A Canadian priest has launched a new phase in his efforts to preserve the threatened languages of the Makushi and Wapishana Indigenous peoples in the vast Diocese of Roraima in northern Brazil.

Pope Francis is getting personally involved in making sure sacred items and cultural artifacts held in the Vatican Museums are returned to Canadian Indigenous communities.

It was a double celebration — the launch of a first book of its kind by an Anishinaabe Catholic woman, and a powerful lesson on how a harmonious blend of indigenous rituals and practices with those of Western Christianity could illuminate the path to a renewed spirit of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and an enriched Catholic Church.

Following Pope Francis’ peripatetic apology this summer, and as the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation looms at September’s end, it’s safe to foresee increases in Indigenous “adaptations” of Catholic liturgy.

As Canadian parishes take up Pope Francis’ challenge to incorporate reconciliation into the life of the Church, particularly as we get closer to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30, there are liturgical options available for Sunday morning Masses in all kinds of parishes.

When Pope Francis travels to Canada to apologize to Indigenous communities for the way the Catholic Church joined efforts to uproot them from their traditional culture and spirituality, their traditions will be on full display.

For the Diversity Club at Sudbury, Ont’s St. Benedict Catholic School, the conversation on water and what it means in Indigenous cultures began on Earth Day.

When news of the 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Residential School landed in Edmonton, an elder in the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples wanted to put out a statement in Cree. The problem is that survivors of the residential school system lost their language when they were children in the schools.

When Grade 11 English students in Durham Catholic high schools receive their reading assignments this year, the works of Shakespeare and other conventional texts will be replaced with ones focusing on Indigenous voices.

VANCOUVER -- Sr. Denece Billesberger admits she knew little about the history of the land on which St. Thomas Aquinas Regional High School stood when she began teaching there in 1969.

“Your two jobs today are to play and to have fun.”