Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 02/01) - A holy, pope-blessed cross visited Dettah yesterday.

Around 50 people gathered in the community's little parish church in a mass to pay tribute to the four-meter, 13-kilogram religious symbol.

The cross' varnish is peeling and the wood is chipped and cracked, scars from a 15-year world tour which began in Rome with Pope John Paul II's blessing on World Youth Day.

Now the cross is on its Northern-leg of a tour across Canada that began in Toronto this summer. It was in Yellowknife on Tuesday.

This is part of the Catholic Church's drive to legitimize its existance to the youth of the world.

One by one the young and old kneeled and prayed before the cross, which leaned against the back wall of the altar as a Yellowknives Dene elder sang a hymn in Dogrib.

"I prayed for all the young people in the community and my father who passed away," said Verna Crapeau as she finished her prayers, still holding a rosary in her hands.

A group of young men carried the cross into the church. It could not be stood upright because the ceiling was too low.

Before the mass, people gathered around a blackened metal barrel, sawed in half to form a makeshift firepit now spitting flames and smoking, for a feeding of the fire ceremony.

It was an act of gratitude to the creator.

People threw in cigarettes, shag tobacco and chewing tobacco along with sugared sweets into a bowl that was later dumped into the fire.

Yellowknife priest Father Philip Boudreau said one of the symbols of the Holy Spirit is fire.

Beneath a grey sky and finger-numbing temperatures two elders said prayers over the fire.

"I'm here to pray for my grandmother," said Eric Crapeau, a young man in the audience.