BOGOTA, Colombia — Pope Francis urged young Colombians on Thursday to take the lead in promoting forgiveness after a half-century of armed conflict, and he demanded the ruling class address the entrenched inequalities that sparked Latin America’s longest-running armed rebellion.
“There has been too much hatred and violence,” Francis told a crowd at Bogota’s presidential palace that included disabled children and soldiers with amputated limbs.
Francis received a raucous welcome on his first full day in Colombia, with young choir members abandoning their positions in the palace courtyard and throwing their arms around him as he arrived. The crowd was equally jubilant at Bogota’s main Plaza Bolivar, where about 22,000 flag-waving Colombians interrupted him repeatedly.
History’s first Latin American pope took the interruptions, protocol hiccups and security breaches in stride, joking with the crowds and relishing in the adoration of one of the continent’s most staunchly Roman Catholic countries.
In his first major speech of his trip, Francis appealed to President Juan Manuel Santos and Colombia’s political, cultural and economic elite to avoid the temptation to seek vengeance as the country emerges from the conflict and works to rebuild. Instead, he said they should commit themselves to “heal wounds, build bridges, strengthen relationships and support one another.”
One year after the government signed a peace accord with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known by its Spanish acronym FARC, the guns have fallen silent and 7,000 rebels are transitioning back to civilian life. But Colombians remain badly divided over the accord, with conservative opponents seeing it as too generous for the guerrillas who were behind scores of atrocities during the conflict.
In all, the fighting left more than 250,000 people dead, 60,000 missing and millions more displaced.
Citing the most famous work of Colombia’s Nobel laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Francis said Colombians now needed to reconcile.
“The solitude of always being at loggerheads has been familiar for decades, and its smell has lingered for a hundred years,” he said. “We do not want any type of violence whatsoever to restrict or destroy one more life.”
Francis appealed to Colombia’s youth to take the lead in promoting forgiveness, saying young people more than adults are able to “leave behind what has hurt us and look to the future without the burden of hatred.”
“You make us see the wider world which stands before us, the whole of Colombia that wishes to grow and continue its development,” he said.