Press. voanews.com
Pope Francis
flew in to Colombia on Wednesday to try to help heal the wounds of Latin
America's longest-running armed conflict, bolstered by a new cease-fire with a
holdout rebel group but fully aware of the fragility of the country's peace
process. During his deeply symbolic five-day visit, Francis is expected to
press Colombian leaders to address the social and economic disparities that
fueled five decades of armed rebellion, while encouraging ordinary Colombians
to balance their need for justice with forgiveness.
In a video
message on the eve of his departure, Francis urged all Colombians to take a
“first step” and reach out to one another for the sake of peace and the future.
“Peace is what Colombia has been looking for and working for for such a long
time,” he said. “A stable and lasting peace, so that we can see one another and
treat one another as brothers, not as enemies.”
Arriving at
Bogota's military air base on a flight from Rome, Francis was being greeted by
President Juan Manuel Santos and Colombia's national symphonic orchestra
playing classics by Vivaldi and Beethoven as well as traditional cumbia music.
A year after the
Colombian government signed the peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the nation remains bitterly divided over the terms
of the deal even as guerrillas have laid down their arms and begun returning to
civilian life. Even the Catholic Church hierarchy, which was instrumental in
facilitating the peace talks and is now spearheading the process of
reconciliation, was divided over what many Colombians saw as the overly
generous terms offered to rebels behind atrocities.
Former President
Alvaro Uribe, a fierce opponent of the peace deal, wrote a letter to the pope
Tuesday expressing concern that the deal with the rebels had fueled a rise in
drug trafficking and created economic uncertainties with the potential to
destroy Colombia's social fabric.
Meanwhile, the
nation's top drug fugitive, the target of a $5 million manhunt by U.S.
authorities, appealed to the Pope to pray that he and his fellow combatants be
allowed to lay down their weapons as part of the peace process - a proposal the
Colombian government has rejected out of hand.
“I'm convinced
that the only way out of the conflict is dialogue,” said Dairo Usuga, appearing
publicly for the first time, in a video published on social media. “The
Catholic Church is a moral reference and we believe that with its prayers we
can move forward in our goal of abandoning our weapons.”
Hoping for ‘good
stability and dialogue’
The plane flying
Pope Francis to Colombia left Rome Wednesday morning and had to change its
flight path to avoid Category 5 Hurricane Irma. A half-hour into the flight, he
told journalists he wanted to “help Colombia in its path of peace.”
He also asked
for prayers for Colombia's neighbor Venezuela, whose problems are likely to
demand some of his attention, hoping it finds “a good stability and dialogue
with everyone.” The Vatican last year sponsored dialogue between President
Nicolas Maduro's government and the opposition and bishops from the country are
slated to meet with Francis in Colombia as pressure builds on the embattled
socialist to yield power.
In Bogota, city
workers were busy scrubbing downtown monuments, erecting the stage for a giant
outdoor Mass and putting the final touches on a security perimeter surrounding
the Nunciature where the pope will sleep every night. While many Colombians
hail the pope's humility as a model to emulate, they have questioned the hefty
cost of the visit.
“It's great
what's happening, the pope is a modest person,” Aristobulo Fonseca said as he
hung two images of Catholic saints from the rearview mirror of his taxi.
“What's not good is how they're making a carnival of this visit and spending so
much money.”
Reconciliation
meeting
The highlight of
Francis' trip comes Friday, with a meeting and prayer of reconciliation between
victims of the conflict and former guerrillas in Villavicencio, a city south of
Bogota surrounded by territory long held by the FARC.
The event will
be packed with symbolism.
Francis will beatify two Colombian priests
killed during decades of guerrilla warfare, declaring them martyrs who were
killed out of hatred for the Catholic faith. And the meeting will be framed by
one of the most poignant symbols of the conflict: the mutilated Christ statue
that was rescued from a church in the western town of Bojaya after a FARC
mortar attack in 2012. Some 300 people were sheltering in the church when it
was hit during a three-way firefight between FARC rebels, right-wing militias
and the army. At least 79 people died and 100 were injured.
In total, the
conflict left more than 250,000 people dead, 60,000 missing and millions more
displaced. Ahead of Francis' arrival,
the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the last remaining major
rebel group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, signed a bilateral
cease-fire agreement, a significant step toward negotiating a permanent peace
deal.
The Vatican No.
2, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said the key message of the trip is “the capacity
to forgive: to forgive, and receive forgiveness.” Francis is the third pope to visit Colombia,
following Pope Paul VI in 1968 and St. John Paul II in 1986. Both used their
visits to show solidarity with victims of violence, discrimination and poverty
and to urge government authorities to fix the structural and societal problems
that have made Colombia one of the most unequal countries in Latin America.
Monsignor
Octavio Ruiz Arenas, the first archbishop of Villavicencio and now a Vatican official,
said a key point that Francis will press is for Colombia to avoid repeating the
mistakes of peace processes in Central America, where demobilized guerrilla
fighters did not re-integrate into society and instead joined criminal gangs.
Colombia's well-entrenched drug traffickers will be a strong draw for rebels
who haven't known anything other than jungle warfare for decades, he said.
“When Paul VI
went, he spoke about all these problems, but unfortunately all they talk about
now are his pretty speeches,” Ruiz said. “The same thing happened with John
Paul II.” “But if the authorities aren't able to say, ‘The pope is right; we
have to change’ - if there's no goodwill on the part of everyone - the words
will just remain like a nice memory,” he said.