In indigenous area, pope slams violence
Francis calls on radicals, officials to reach agreement.
Pope Francis TEMUCO, CHILE — denounced the use of violence to achieve political gains as he traveled Wednesday to the heart of Chile’s centuries-old conflict with indigenous peoples, where several church burnings have been blamed on radical Mapuche factions pressing for their cause.
Hours after two more churches and three helicopters were torched, Francis celebrated Mass at a former military base that not only lies on contested indigenous Mapuche land but was also a former detention center in Chile’s brutal dictatorship.
Leading some 150,000 people in a moment of silent prayer, Francis said the fertile green fields and snowcapped mountains of the Mapuche heartland in Chile’s southern Araucania region were both blessed by God and cursed by man, the site of “grave human rights violations” during the 1973-1990 dictatorship.
“We offer this Mass for all those who suffered and died, and for those who daily bear the burden of those many injustices,” he said.
Francis also referred to the more recent violence that has flared in Araucania, Chile’s poorest region. No one has claimed responsibility for the 11 firebombs that have damaged, or in some cases, burned churches to the ground in recent days, or the three helicopters that were torched overnight.
Prosecutor Enrique Vasquez told local media Wednesday that investigators found a sign and pamphlets demanding the release of Mapuche prisoners at the scene of the burned church, while pro-Mapuche pamphlets were found at the scene of the burned helicopters.
The Argentine Jesuit pope took radical factions to task, saying violence wasn’t the answer to their grievances.
“You cannot assert yourselves by destroying others, because this only leads to more violence and division,” he admonished in his homily. “Violence begets violence, destruction increases fragmentation and separation. Violence eventually makes a most just cause into a lie.”
At the same time, he demanded the government not just negotiate “elegant” agreements with the indigenous peoples, but actually implement them.
The Argentine pope is particularly attuned to indigenous issues and their campaigns for recognition. He hopes to use his weeklong trip to Chile and Peru to put the issue on the global agenda and set the stage for a big church meeting next year on the Amazon and native peoples who live there.