Jesuits and Colombia's peace and reconciliation process

(Vatican Radio)  Pope Francis is coming to the end of his apostolic visit to Colombia.   He began his Sept. 6-11 visit to the Latin American country that is emerging from decades of warfare, arriving in the capital, Bogota, on Wednesday.  He  made day trips to Villavicencio on Friday and to Medellin on Saturday.  His final day, Sunday, will be in the  port city of Cartagena on the Caribbean coast, from where he flies back to Rome that day. 

Cartagena was the mission territory of the great Spanish Jesuit missionary St. Peter Claver, known for his ministry to Afro-Americans in the 17th century.  Considered a model of Christian love and of the promotion of human rights, the Colombian Congress declared September 9 as the Human Rights national Day in his honour.   

Pope Francis will celebrate his last public Mass in the evening at the seafront in Cartagena, during which the remains of St. Peter Claver and St. Maria Bernarda Bütler, a Swiss Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, who also worked there, will be exposed.  

Vatican Radio’s Linda Bordoni who is following the Pope in Colombia, caught up with Jesuit priest Father Mauricio Garcia Duran, Director of JRS for Colombia, Latin America and the Caribbean, to find out about what the Pope is going to tell the nation on the last day, Sunday. She first asked him about how important an issue is human rights in the peace and reconciliation process in Colombia, where there are vast numbers of marginalized and displaced.   

Listen: