Pope Francis spoke out against corporate greed and apologized for colonialism in the Americas in a speech Thursday in a meeting of groups working for the unemployed, the landless and the impoverished.
In a speech to the World Meeting of Popular Movements in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Pope Francis asked, “Do we realize that something is wrong in a world where there are so many farm workers without land, so many families without a home, so many laborers without rights, so many persons whose dignity is not respected?”
He spoke of the “new colonialism” to his audience of grassroots organizers, saying it appears at times as the “anonymous influence” of corporations, loan agencies, some free trade measures, and austerity measures that impact the lives of the poor.
He also spoke of climate change, echoing his landmark encyclical published last month that connected climate change to human civilization. He said corporate greed has imposed a mentality of “profit at any price” with no concern for destruction of nature.
The pope apologized for historical offenses caused by the Roman Catholic Church, but also for those caused by white colonists who settled America at the expense of native peoples. He praised those in the Latin American indigenous peoples’ movement for embracing the mingling of cultures rather than the suppression of them.
The pope arrived in Bolivia Tuesday and was greeted by Bolivian President Evo Morales. It was the second leg of his three-nation tour of his home continent of South America.
The pontiff told a crowd of thousands who gathered at the airport in the capital, La Paz, that Bolivia “is making important steps towards including broad sectors in the country’s economic, social and political life.”
Morales said the visit of the Argentinean-born pope represents support for the “liberation” of the Bolivian people. Relations between Bolivia’s Catholic Church and the Bolivian government became strained after Morales, the country’s first indigenous leader, first took office in 2006, but have improved since Francis’s election in 2013.
The pope later traveled into La Paz for talks with Morales and other political and civic leaders. During the trip, Francis stopped his motorcade at the spot where the body of Jesuit Priest Luis Espinal was found in 1980 after he was arrested and tortured by Bolivian paramilitary squads.
Among the items on the pope’s agenda while in Bolivia is a trip to the notoriously violent Palmasola prison, where at least 30 inmates were killed in 2013 during gang fighting.
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