Saturday 10 / August / 2024
Medellin (Colombia): Pope Francis on Saturday urged Colombians to help their fellow citizens who hunger for food, dignity and God, pressing his appeal for the South American country to tackle social inequality.
On his penultimate day in Colombia, Francis flew to Medellin, the city northwest of the capital that was once notorious as the stomping grounds of drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Low clouds and rain grounded the helicopter he was to have taken from a military base to the site of an outdoor Mass, forcing him to go by car. Residents streamed out of their houses along the 43 km (26-mile) route when they heard he was passing by.
When he arrived about an hour behind schedule, he briefly donned the traditional "cafetero" hat and scarf worn by Colombian coffee growers.
"Thank you for your patience and perseverance," he told the crowd, apologising for the delay.
Speaking in a homily to hundreds of thousands of people on muddied fields, Francis urged Colombians to "get involved" in helping each other and to embrace "acts of non-violence, reconciliation and peace."
The leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics has brought a message of national reconciliation as the country tries to heal the wounds left by a 50-year civil war and bitter disagreements over last year's peace deal with leftist guerrillas that some say lets them off too leniently.
"He's come with a message of peace, of hope," said Angie Alvear, 28, a Medellin housewife who arrived at the site with her mother nine hours before the Mass started. "It's especially important for young people. He'll help them change their mentality toward peace."
On Friday in the tropical city of Villavicencio, the pontiff urged Colombians skeptical of the deal with the FARC guerrillas to be open to reconciliation with those who have repented, speaking hours after a top rebel leader asked the pontiff for forgiveness..
Francis has also used his trip to the predominantly Roman Catholic country to denounce the social inequality that still plagues Colombia, which has extreme poverty in some rural areas.
He has called for laws to tackle the structural causes of these problems, which he said spur violence.
The Medellin that Francis saw is a city transformed since his predecessor Pope John Paul visited in 1986.
Back then, violence between cartels, paramilitary groups and guerrillas raged in the poor "comuna" neighborhoods on its outskirts, and the late pontiff was moved to decry drug violence.
The city is now heralded as a model of urban development. It has installed cable cars up the steep Andean slopes that surround it to save working-class residents a punishing climb, and it has built libraries in sections that were once sites of gun battles.
Feared drug trafficker Escobar, Medellin's most infamous resident, was gunned down in the city in a U.S.-backed operation in 1993. He was recently resurrected as a character in the popular Netflix series "Narcos."
Before returning to Bogota in the afternoon, Francis was due to visit a home for abandoned children and address priests and nuns.
He visits the city of Cartagena on Sunday before leaving for Rome that night.
