Pope to wrap up Colombia trip in Cartagena with focus on poor
BOGOTA/CARTAGENA, Colombia: Pope Francis wraps up his trip to Colombia with a visit to the Caribbean port city of Cartagena, a top tourist destination famous for its colonial walled ramparts but which masks deep social inequality in its surrounding shantytowns.
Cartagena’s narrow cobbled streets and well-preserved church squares attract millions of visitors every year, the financial fruits of which barely touch the lives of the city’s poor.
The Argentine pope has so far during his trip focused his message on reconciliation and forgiveness for a 50-year civil war that has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions.
The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics has also called for laws to end social inequality.
In Cartagena, he will focus on the marginalised, particularly children at risk of sexual exploitation, often spurred by demand from foreign tourists.
Francis is due to visit the impoverished neighborhood of San Francisco, where he will bless a shelter for at-risk AfroColombian girls vulnerable to child prostitution, drugs and violence.
He will then meet participants in two charity programs and pray at the church named for Saint Peter Claver, renowned for his work helping slaves in the 1600s as they came off ships from Africa to be sold in Cartagena’s markets.
Some 300 Afro-Colombians who receive assistance from the Jesuit religious order, of which the pope is a member, will pray with him in the church that holds the relics of the saint known as the ‘slave of slaves.’ — Reuters