QUITO, Ecuador — Pope Francis wraps up the first leg of a three-nation South American pilgrimage Wednesday after issuing an impassioned call for a new economic and ecological world order where the goods of the Earth are shared by everyone, not just exploited by the rich.
Francis will visit the elderly and give a pep talk to local priests before flying to Bolivia, where the environment, ministering to the poor and the government’s tense relations with the Catholic Church are high on the agenda.
Bolivian President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian known for anti-imperialist and socialist rhetoric, will greet Francis at the airport and join him for a speech to local officials and diplomats before the pontiff goes to the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. The stop in La Paz is being kept to four hours to spare the 78-year-old pope from the taxing 13,120-foot elevation.
Taking up the global warming issue in Quito on Tuesday, Francis pressed the arguments made in his headline-grabbing encyclical earlier this month that the planet must not be exploited by the wealthy few for short-term profit at the expense of the poor.
Francis has called for environmentally responsible development, one that is aimed at helping the poor without sacrificing the planet. The oil industry and its supporters, particularly in the U.S., have criticized the pope’s anti-fossil fuel campaign as irresponsible and uninformed.
The pope will spend the rest of his Bolivian stay in Santa Cruz, where he will headline another summit of grassroots groups and visit with inmates at the notoriously violent Palmasola prison. After that he is going to Paraguay.