The pontiff, who specifically requested the visit to the Palmasola prison, walked slowly through a courtyard where hundreds of prisoners and their families awaited him.
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Back inside the penitentiary Francis exchanged hugs and kisses with prisoners. He also held children in his arms, and kissed them, too. He used the visit to say on Thursday that he has been seeking a meeting with President Obama, whom he called an imperialist at the U.N.in November. “I would like to reply to that question with something absolutely certain about my own life: The man standing before you is a man who has been forgiven”.
The Pope cited what he called “the new colonialism” that he said “takes on different faces”.
“I asked him how he felt and he said he felt very good”. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.
A gang war there in 2013 left more than 30 people dead.
The prison ministry reports 84 percent of inmates have not been convicted of any crimes. He was speaking in Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. Also children of imprisoned parents live there. Some of them are as young as six years old. Chavez said. “It’s time to turn the page and pitch in to start anew”.
The restaurant was also given an impromptu makeover – with white sheets hung over the windows to make it all a little more suitable for his holiness.
Three inmates told Pope Francis of their tribulations inside the prison.
Members of another group, the Guarani, sold feathered headdresses to pilgrims, who travelled from Argentina, Brazil and Colombia to try to catch a glimpse of their pope.
Francis expressed sympathy for their plight but told them not to give up hope or their personal dignity. Francis briefly grasps what was later dubbed the “Communist crucifix” before passing it off, and looking quite puzzled.
“And yet, while working for this, we should not think that everything is lost”, the pope added.
“Help one another. Do not be afraid to help one another”.
Palmasola is infamous for violence between factions. Other prison sections are less hospitable, particularly Modules 3 and 4, which hold the most risky inmates.
Most of Palmasola’s inmates have not been convicted of any crime. She said Bolivia’s criminal justice system is based on lies, deceit and abuse of power.
Paradoxically, during his homily at Mass, Francis criticized a consumeristic way of thinking, “in which everything has a price, everything can be bought, everything is negotiable”.
The pope later traveled into La Paz for talks with Morales and other political and civic leaders.
Morales said in a Friday interview with The Associated Press that he gave the pope a wallet with coca leaves, but he apparently didn’t use them.
“It’s the lifers who control the prison”, he said. St. John Paul II, for his part, apologized to the continent’s indigenous for the “pain and suffering” caused during the 500 years of the church’s presence in the Americas during a 1992 visit to the Dominican Republic.
Pope Francis spoke out against the persecution of Middle East Christians, demanding an end to the “genocide” in Bolivia Thursday. But Morales, an Aymara Indian, said things have changed with this pope and the Bolivian people are greeting Francis as someone who is “helping in the liberation of our people”.
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Pontiff in Bolivia asks church to “kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past” .
