‘Church for the poor’ focus of pope’s visit to South America

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is taking his “church for the poor” to three of South America’s poorest and most peripheral countries, making a grueling, weeklong trip that will showcase the pope at his unpredictable best: speaking his native Spanish on his home turf about issues closest to his heart.

Indigenous peoples will take center stage during much of Francis’ visit Sunday to July 13 in Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay, while the pontiff’s own Jesuit order will be in the spotlight for its role in evangelizing the continent centuries ago and even today.

Environmental concerns in the Amazon, border conflicts and the region’s tortured history with authoritarian regimes also factor into the agenda as history’s first Latin American pope returns to Spanish-speaking South America for the first time since he was elected two years ago.

“He knows this reality, because he worked so long with the bishops of Latin America and as head of the Jesuits in Argentina,” said Daniel Gussmann, director of the Catholic Church’s Caritas charity in Buenos Aires. “He knows these countries, and their problems with poverty and where much of the population has no access to land.”

Francis will meet with the elderly poor in Ecuador, visit Bolivia’s notorious Palmasola prison and tour Paraguay’s flood-prone Banado Norte shantytown, bringing a message of hope to society’s most marginalized.

He’ll also preside over a meeting of grass-roots groups representing indigenous peoples, campesinos and the “cartoneros” who pick through garbage for recyclable goods — the last a group he long ministered to while working in the slums of Buenos Aires as archbishop.