In Canada’s north, where the wounds of the residential school system remain deeply etched into Indigenous communities, Archbishop Susai Jesu of Keewatin–Le Pas sees reconciliation not as a destination but as a daily act of accompaniment.

The 55-year-old Jesu was born in India, in the village of Pushpavanam in Tamil Nadu State, India, and is the first cleric from the subcontinent appointed to lead a North American archdiocese not primarily serving the Indian diaspora.

The archdiocese of Keewatin–Les Pas sprawls across more the 450,000 square miles in which roughly 90% of the faithful belong to the Indigenous groups of the First Nations in Canada, with whom Jesu has come to feel a powerful kinship over two decades of ministry.