Forget revenge, focus on the marginalised

Pope Francis returned from his trip to Columbia this week after a busy schedule covering five days. During his South American trip millions of people arrived to witness his prayers of peace and unity.

There was a welcoming ceremony on the day of his arrival in the late afternoon of Wednesday, September 6, followed by several meetings on Thursday with the President of Columbia and the bishops.

The Pontiff arrived in Colombia as the country pursues peace after five decades of armed conflict, which has claimed 220,000 lives and left millions more victimised and displaced.

Colombia’s government and a Marxist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), reached a peace accord last year. The FARC is demobilising and recently formed a political party.

Speaking alongside President Juan Manuel Santos on September 7, the Pope called on Colombians to recognise that “real wealth is diversity” and to pursue a “culture of encounter”, in which people are at the centre of all political, social and economic activity. Promoting such a culture would “help us flee from the temptation of revenge and the satisfaction of short-term partisan interests”.

Cast aside

“I encourage you to look to all those who today are excluded and marginalised by society, those who have no value in the eyes of the majority, who are held back, cast aside.

“Everyone is needed in the work of creating and shaping society. This is not achieved simply with those of ‘pure blood’, but by all,” the Pope told Santos and government officials outside the Casa de Narino, Colombia’s presidential palace.

The speech was Pope Francis’ first official event on his five-day visit to the South American country.

The peace accord with the FARC has proved divisive; some in Colombia disapprove of FARC leaders receiving reduced punishments for committing atrocities and fear the presence of former guerrillas in the country’s political process.

The following day, in a prayer service, where both victims and perpetrators of violence stood under the gaze of a bomb-damaged crucifix, Pope Francis urged Colombians to summon the courage to make peace.

Symbolically presiding over the event was what remained of a crucifix from the church in Bojaya, an image of Jesus whose arms and legs were blown off in 2002 when an improvised homemade mortar launched by rebels crashed through the roof of a church and exploded.

The United Nations was unable to verify the exact number of people killed; some reports say 79 people died, others say 119 people died. All agree that almost half the victims were children.

“I am standing on sacred ground,” Pope Francis said at the prayer service, “a land watered by the blood of thousands of innocent victims and by the heart-breaking sorrow of their families and friends”.

In 2016 FARC apologised for the massacre in the Bojaya church. The rebels had been engaged in a firefight with members of a paramilitary group and the church was between their positions.

The following day, September 9, the Pope’s visit to Medellin began with heavy rain and fog that forced him to travel 30 miles from Rionegro airport by car rather than helicopter. The change in plans meant the Mass began 45 minutes later than scheduled.

Before the opening prayer, Pope Francis apologised for the wait and thanked the estimated 1.3 million people for their patience.

The bishops of Latin America met in Medellin in 1968 and formally committed themselves to a “preferential option for the poor”, to the support of small Christian communities and to a Gospel-based reading of their social and economic realities.

In his homily in Medellin, Pope Francis said that when Jesus’ disciples first began following him, they had to go through a process of conversion and purification, changing the way they saw the relationship between Jewish law and faith in God.

“Some of the precepts, prohibitions and mandates made them feel secure,” the Pope said. “Fulfilling certain practices and rites dispensed them from the uncomfortable question: ‘What would God like us to do?’”

Following Jesus and sharing the Good News of Salvation in him, he said, means leaving one’s comfort zone and going out, encountering others and concretely showing them God’s love.

Practices

“It is of the greatest importance that we who call ourselves disciples not cling to a certain style or to particular practices that cause us to be more like some Pharisees than like Jesus,” he said.

The law is meant to guide people in doing good, and it is not to be ignored, the Pope said. But true faith means going deeper, experiencing God’s love, changing one’s life and getting involved in what can improve the lives of others, especially the poor and vulnerable.

On September 10, the last day of his visit, the Pontiff visited the Church of St Peter Claver, a saint venerated throughout the Americas as a champion of human rights, Pope Francis offered special prayers for Venezuela and its people suffering in the midst of a huge political and economic crisis.

“From this place, I want to assure my prayers for each of the countries of Latin America, especially for nearby Venezuela. I expressed my closeness to each of the sons and daughters of this beloved nation, as well as for those who have found in Colombia a place of welcome,” he said in Cartagena.

Venezuela has been torn by violence and stricken with severe shortages of food and medicine as its political crisis drags on. More than 100 people have died in protests as President Nicolas Maduro has attempted to install a constituent assembly to rewrite the nation’s constitution and consolidate his power.

“From this city, the seat of human rights, I call for the cessation of every kind of violence in political life,” the Pope said. He expressed hope for a peaceful solution to the “grave crisis”.

Driving through the streets of the Caribbean coastal city, the Popemobile braked suddenly, and Pope Francis hit his head. A big bump appeared quickly on his left cheekbone and a few specks of blood from his scratched eyebrow stained his white soutane.

After a quick treatment with ice, according to the Vatican, the Pope was back in the Popemobile making his way to the Church of St Peter Claver, the Jesuit who devoted the last 40 years of his life to caring for and ministering to African slaves.

Arriving from Bogota for the last day of his five-day visit, Pope Francis went to one of Cartagena’s poorest neighbourhoods, where he blessed the cornerstone for a series of houses for particularly vulnerable people: the homeless and victims of trafficking.

The homes are sponsored by Talitha Kum, an international network to fight trafficking; the network is sponsored by the women’s and men’s international unions of superiors general. The Pope also visited the home of Lorenza Perez, 77, who has worked for decades as a volunteer cook at a church-run soup kitchen.

Pope Francis told the crowd outside St Peter Claver Church that the two stops “have done me much good because they demonstrate how the love of God is made visible each day”.

The Pontiff departed for Rome airport in the evening of September 10, arriving back in Rome the following morning.