- Title: POPE-LATAM/ECUADOR-SHRINE Francis wraps up Ecuador trip with impromptu speech
- Date: 8th July 2015
- Summary: CHURCH OFFICIALS DANCING POPE ON POPEMOBILE ARRIVING POPE ON PUBLIC STAIRCASE
- Embargoed: 23rd July 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Ecuador
- Country: Ecuador
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVAEVQT03U9GE6QT22EWUP5Q0L1H
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Pope Francis finished up the first leg of his Latin swing Wednesday (July 8) with visits to a home for impoverished seniors and a local shrine before delivering a freewheeling, extemporaneous speech to Church officials outside of Quito.
The visit to Quinche, a city located 45 kms (28 miles) east of the city, followed two masses in Quito and Guayaquil that drew about 1.5 million people in which he urged the world to take better care of the environment and the poor.
The Argentine-born pontiff was spending his last few hours at a home for the elderly in Ecuador's highland capital Quito and a shrine just outside the city where he was to meet priests, nuns and seminarians.
The first Jesuit Pope made a pitstop at a home for seniors who don't have the resources to provide for themselves. The home is connected to orders affiliated with Mother Teresa, according to agency reports.
He also paid a visit to the city's main attraction, a statue of the Virgin of El Quinche.
Francis then proceeded to take the public stage to deliver a speech to more than 5,000 members of the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis decided to scrap his planned speech and opted instead to speak from the heart.
"In these two days, 48 hours, that I had contact with all of you, I noted something strange. Sorry, (but) something strange among the Ecuadorean people. Everywhere I go, the reception has always been happy, cordial, religious, pious, everything," he said.
Ecuador highlights, possibly more than any other country in the world, the inherent difficulties within the pope's recent environmental encyclical.
The country earns around one-half of its foreign income from oil, yet is also one of the world's most biodiverse nations, with more endangered species than anywhere else.
A large amount of the oil that the socialist government hopes will help feed the poor, though, is locked up under rainforest land.
In his final speech in Quito on Tuesday, the pope focused on this conundrum, saying "the tapping of natural resources, which are so abundant in Ecuador, must not be concerned with short-term benefits," he said. "We received this world as an inheritance from past generations, but also as a loan from future generations, to whom we will have to return it!".
He is next due to fly to high-altitude La Paz, in Bolivia, on Wednesday afternoon. Oxygen tanks are kept at the airport for arriving passengers who may struggle with the thin air.
That will focus attention on the 78-year-old pope's health as he had part of one lung removed when he was younger after an infection that almost took his life.
Outside La Paz, Francis will stop at the spot where the body of Jesuit Father Luis Espinal Camps was found in 1980. The priest, who was a strong supporter of the rights of miners, was tortured and murdered by paramilitaries.
Francis will meet with Bolivian President Evo Morales, a prominent indigenous member of the bloc of socialist Latin American leaders who has won widespread support with folksy charm and prudent spending from a natural gas bonanza to cut poverty.
On Wednesday evening, the pope flies to Santa Cruz in western Bolivia. There, he will say a Mass on Thursday and the next day visit the notoriously violent Palmasola prison. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None