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Pope Francis to Colombians: ‘There has been too much hatred and violence’

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos, left, stands with Pope Francis at El Dorado airport after the pontiff's arrival in Bogota, Colombia, Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017. Pope Francis has arrived in Colombia for a five-day visit. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Bogota, Colombia • Pope Francis urged Colombians on Thursday to come together to heal the divisions spawned by five decades of armed conflict and address the entrenched inequality that sparked Latin America’s longest-running armed rebellion.

“There has been too much hatred and violence,” Francis told a crowd at Bogota’s presidential palace that included soldiers with amputated limbs and disabled children.

Francis received a raucous welcome on his first full day in Colombia, with young choir members abandoning their positions in the palace courtyard and throwing their arms around him as he arrived for his first event of the day. History’s first Latin American pope took the protocol and security breaches in stride, relishing in the adoration of one of the continent’s most staunchly Roman Catholic countries.

In his speech, Francis appealed to President Juan Manuel Santos and Colombia’s political, cultural and economic elite to avoid the temptation to seek vengeance as the country emerges from the conflict and works to rebuild. Instead, he urged them to commit themselves to “heal wounds, build bridges, strengthen relationships and support one another.”

A year after the government signed a peace accord with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known by its Spanish acronym FARC, the guns have been silenced and 7,000 rebels are transitioning back to civilian life. But Colombians remain badly divided over the accord, with conservative opponents seeing it as too generous for the guerrillas who were behind scores of atrocities during the conflict.

Citing the most famous work of Colombia’s Nobel laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Francis said he wanted to come to Colombia to encourage reconciliation.

“The solitude of always being at loggerheads has been familiar for decades, and its smell has lingered for a hundred years,” he said. “We do not want any type of violence whatsoever to restrict or destroy one more life.”

In addition, Francis insisted that Colombia now needed to enact “just laws” to resolve the structural causes of poverty and inequality to “overcome the conflicts that have torn apart this nation for decades.”

“Let us not forget that inequality is the root of social ills,” he warned.

The FARC formed as a Marxist army in the mid-1960s to overthrow Colombia’s economic and social system and open the way to redistributing land amid gross economic inequalities.

While the first year of the accord’s implementation has seen the FARC disarm, it has also been marked by the state’s failures to bring services to hard-to-reach communities where the government has historically had little presence and where rebels are beginning a new chapter as civilians. Former guerrillas arriving at many of the 26 demobilization zones found little more than fields of mud, and months later many remain living in tents rather than the buildings with running water and electricity that the government promised.

Santos, who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the conflict, echoed the pope’s words in his speech, urging Colombians to let go of lingering resentments.

“Silencing the guns is worthless if we remain armed in our hearts,” he told the crowd. “Ending the war is worthless if we still see each other as enemies.”

Francis had a packed day Thursday, meeting with bishops from around the region, including his first encounter with clergy from neighboring Venezuela who are looking for the pope to demand accountability from their country’s socialist government and deliver a message of hope to that nation torn by political and economic turmoil.

He ends the day with an outdoor Mass in Simon Bolivar Park that is expected to be attended by hundreds of thousands of worshippers.

The theme of reconciliation wasn’t far from Francis’ mind from the moment he arrived in Bogota late Wednesday afternoon to great fanfare.

In a gesture likely to mark the deep symbolism of the trip, he was presented on the tarmac with a commemorative peace dove by a youth who was born in a jungle camp to a guerrilla father and a politician mother after she was taken captive by FARC rebels in 2002. Clara Rojas, now a congresswoman, did not see her son after his birth until she was freed in 2008 when he was 3.

Francis then made his way in the popemobile past thousands of people who had stood for hours waiting to catch a glimpse of the wildly popular pontiff along the 15-kilometer (9-mile) route from the airport to the Vatican’s embassy.

With no police line in sight, Francis was practically mobbed by well-wishers, though he seemed to revel in the outpouring of emotion from people showering him with flowers, red-yellow-and-blue Colombian flags and shouts of “Viva Francisco.” He even gave a few high-fives to some youths who got a little too close.

Once at the Nunciature in Bogota, where Francis will sleep every night, he delivered his first public remarks to a group of young people battling drug addiction, urging them never to lose “happiness and hope.”

It was a message that resonated with Angie Albanil, who spent part of her teenage years on the streets of Bogota but now is getting back on her feet as part of a church-backed group that performed rap and traditional cumbia music for the pontiff.

“The ills that have spread in society, we’re the ones who have to overcome them with respect for people who think differently,” she said in a prepared remarks read to the pope upon his arrival. “We’re the ones who have to build a society in which we all fit.”