VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis will preside over a reconciliation ceremony between Colombian victims and former guerrillas during a September visit aimed at consolidating the peace process to end Latin America’s longest-running armed conflict.
Francis will also pay homage to the patron saint of slaves, the 16th-century Jesuit priest St. Peter Claver, when he travels to the former slave-trading hub of Cartagena.
The Vatican on Friday released details of Francis’ Sept. 6-11 trip, his fifth to Latin America and the first papal visit to Colombia since St. John Paul II’s in 1986.
Highlights include a Mass in Bogota’s Simon Bolivar park that is expected to draw up to a million people. A day later, the pope will attend a prayer for reconciliation in Villavicencio, a traditional stronghold of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
