Pope to wrap up time in Ecuador, fly to Bolivia

Espinal, a follower of the left-wing liberation theology, was kidnapped and tortured by Bolivia’s right-wing regime before his body was dumped on a highway in La Paz.

Pope Francis waving to the faithful while riding on a popemobile in El Quinche, Ecuador, yesterday. “They don’t realize that love for the poor is at the center of the Gospel”.

Father Hernan Paredes, a fellow Jesuit priest and longtime friend of Pope Francis still fondly calls Pope Francis, Jorge. Those words were quoted from the pope’s most recent encyclical, Laudato Sii, which mainly addressed climate change and the environment.

He also asked the public policy makers to help Ecuador overcome its current challenges of migration, overcrowded cities, consumerism, poverty and unemployment with laws and regulations that “aim at inclusion, create opportunities for dialogue and encounter, while leaving behind all forms of repression, excessive control or loss of freedom as painful past memories”.

The sanctuary, some 50 kilometers (32 miles) east of Quito, is where Pope Francis is speaking to some 6,500 priests and seminarians.

The government made it obligatory to teach other religions in schools alongside Catholicism, the faith of almost four in five Bolivians.

Bolivians will have to wait a little longer for the arrival of Pope Francis. As pope, he’s now winning fans and converts with his calls to end class divisions and social exclusion, a theme he revisited at yesterday’s Mass.

Francis’s trip to Bolivia follows a four-day visit to Ecuador, where he celebrated two massive outdoor masses and pleaded for “dialogue” in a country rocked by anti-government protests.

Environmental issues have been contentious for much of President Rafael Correa’s eight-year-old administration.

Pope Francis speaks as he meets members of the civil society at the San Francisco Church in Quito, Ecuador, July 7, 2015.

He says: “It seems we’re not being permitted a direct voice”. “Now the Bolivian people receive you with joy and hope”, said Morales, wearing a dark suit with an indigenous pattern embroidered around the lapels. Francis then planned to go to a Quito church for an encounter with business leaders, people involved in the arts and indigenous groups.

“The tapping of natural resources, which are so abundant in Ecuador, must not be concerned with short-term benefits”, he said. “Our people are hungry for God”.

The last visit by a pope to Bolivia was a six-day tour by John Paul II in 1988.

He appeared to be making a clear reference to climate change doubters when he said: “It is wrong to turn aside from what is happening all around us, as if certain situations did not exist or have nothing to do with our lives”. “The enormous richness of variety moves us away from the temptation of offers that are closer to dictatorships, ideologies or sectarianism”, said Francis, the first Latin American pope. Ecuador and Bolivia both have large indigenous populations. “But history tells us that it only made headway once personal differences were set aside”.

OTIS: Part of the Mass was delivered in the local Quechua language.

At an airport welcome ceremony with Morales by his side, Francis recalled that the Catholic faith took “deep root” in Bolivia centuries ago “and has continued to shed its light upon society, contributing to the development of the nation and shaping its culture”.

Entering the area, Francis stopped the popemobile for a brief moment to hug an elderly woman in a wheelchair. “We have come to see ourselves as her lords and master, entitled to plunder it at will”.

A water-logged crowd estimated by officials at half a million awaits the pope at Quito’s Bicentennial Park.