POPE-LATAM/BOLIVIA-SANTA CRUZ CROWDS Massive crowds gather to hear Pope Francis say mass in Santa Cruz

Record ID: 147775

  • Title: POPE-LATAM/BOLIVIA-SANTA CRUZ CROWDS Massive crowds gather to hear Pope Francis say mass in Santa Cruz
  • Date: 9th July 2015
  • Summary: SANTA CRUZ, BOLIVIA (JULY 9, 2015) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF CROWD OF PEOPLE PUSHING PAST POLICE SECURITY OLD WOMAN HOLDING FLAG WATCHING THROUGH CROWD CROWD PUSHING PAST POLICE SECURITY POSTER OF POPE POPE FRANCIS DRIVING PAST CROWD IN POPEMOBILE ELDERLY WOMAN LOOKING ON POPE FRANCIS WALKING THROUGH CROWD WOMAN CRYING GENERAL CROWD CROWD AND WOMAN IN TREE BEHIND SECURITY AERIA
  • Embargoed: 24th July 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA2G5RFDIOWXUTY0077CKLT0PM0
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Throngs of people awaited Pope Francis on Thursday (July 9) as he arrived to say mass in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
    Francis, Latin America's first pope, arrived in Santa Cruz, after spending four hours in the thin air of the Bolivian capital of La Paz, which sits in a bowl surrounded by mountain peaks, and showed no sign of suffering from altitude sickness.
    Aboard his flight from Ecuador, where he began his "homecoming" tour, the pope drank a tea made of a mix of coca leaves, chamomile and anise seeds to ward off illness, a flight attendant said. Local residents chew coca leaves, the main ingredient for cocaine when processed but which have only a mild stimulant effect in their natural form.
    Wearing a white poncho over his white cassock to warm him against the Andean wind, Francis welcomed Bolivia's social reforms. President Evo Morales has nationalised key industries such as oil and gas to finance welfare programmes and distribute wealth.
    In his address to the pope, Morales, who had frequently clashed with Church officials in Bolivia before relations improved when Francis was elected in 2013, welcomed the pope as a homecoming hero.
    Local Church leaders are calling the visit "Reconciliation and Renewal" and say the pope will seek to heal rifts between the country's indigenous people and descendants of its Spanish colonial conquerors, who brought the Catholic faith to Bolivia.
    The Pope, who lost part of a lung to an infection when he was a young man, will spend two days in the low-lying provincial city of Santa Cruz.
    Francis flew into Bolivia from Quito, Ecuador, where he drew crowds totalling nearly 2 million people.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register