Pope Francis has signaled that it may soon be time to retire due to health concerns as he wrapped up his trip to Canada on Saturday.

At the end of the six-day tour of the country, the 85-year-old pontiff said he could no longer travel as before due to physical ailments.

“It’s not weird. It’s not a disaster. The pope can be changed,” he said, sitting in an airplane wheelchair during a 45-minute press conference.

“I think at my age and with these limitations, I have to save (my energy) to be able to serve the church, or on the contrary think about the possibility of withdrawing,” he added.

During the trip to Canada, the pope was seen for the first time using a wheelchair, walker and cane to get around, reducing his schedule and his ability to interact with crowds.

Earlier this year, he injured ligaments in his right knee.

Ongoing treatment for his knee forced him to cancel a trip to Africa scheduled for the first week of July.

“I will try to continue to travel and be close to people because I think it’s a way of serving, of being close. But more than that, I can’t say,” he said. declared.

On Monday, the Pope issued a long-awaited apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s “residential school” system, in which an estimated 150,000 children were separated from their families between 1883 and the 1970s.

Indigenous children were brutally forced to assimilate into these schools and often suffered physical and sexual abuse and neglect.

Catholic orders ran 66 of the 139 government-funded residential schools, sites of what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called “cultural genocide.”

The pope said on Saturday that he did not use the word “genocide” because it had not occurred to him.

The Canadian government said Wednesday that its apology was not enough.

“It’s true that I didn’t use the word because it didn’t cross my mind, but I described the genocide, didn’t I?” Francis explained.

“I apologized, I apologized for this job, which was genocide.”

He also confirmed that he hoped to travel to Kazakhstan in mid-September for an interfaith conference where he could meet Russian Orthodox Patriarch Cyril, who has justified the war in Ukraine.

A trip to Kyiv was also on the pope’s agenda, although the timing has yet to be confirmed.