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by Our Foreign Desk
POPE Francis was set to address a meeting of social movements yesterday after arriving in Bolivia on Wednesday.
Bolivia’s socialist President Evo Morales embraced the Argentina-born pontiff on the asphalt at La Paz airport.
Francis praised Bolivia for taking “important steps” to include the poor and marginalised in the political and economic life of South America’s poorest country.
He said: “The voice of the bishops, which must be prophetic, speaks to society in the name of the church, our mother, from her preferential evangelical option for the poor.”
Mr Morales replied that, while the church had previously sided with the oppressors of Bolivia’s masses, the new Pope was “helping in the liberation of our people.”
“He who betrays a poor person betrays Pope Francis,” he said.
Mr Morales presented the Pope with a crucifix in the form of a hammer and sickle (pictured), identical to one owned by Jesuit liberation theology priest Luis Espinal.
Mr Espinal was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Bolivia’s right-wing military regime in 1980. His body was dumped on a road in La Paz.
On his way to the city, Francis — who led the Jesuit order in Argentina during the “dirty war” of the 1970s — stopped his motorcade to pray by the assassination site.
“Remember one of our brothers, a victim of interests that didn’t want him to fight for Bolivia’s freedom,” he said. “Father Espinal preached the gospel, the gospel that bothered them, and because of this they got rid of him.”
