On December 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Church in Canada will celebrate the National Day of Prayer in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples. This project, with the approval of the Bishops of Canada, has been coordinated since 2002 by the Canadian Catholic Indigenous Council (formerly the Canadian Catholic Aboriginal Council). This year, the reflection by the Council centers on the theme Healing of the Earth. “Together we share one common home, Mother Earth, and we are all dependant on her for our existence. We continue to face very real threats to our ecology and way of life, which has never been more apparent as we live through the present Covid-19 pandemic. We must come together as one human family. Pope Francis reminds us in his encyclical Laudato Si that: ‘Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home.’ We turn to the Earth for sustenance: for shelter, food, and medicines. And when we die, our bodies will return to the Earth where our ancestors reside as we await to be with God in Heaven forever.”
