Pope Francis urged the Colombian bishops on Friday to support the leaders who work for peace, “of whatever current,” upon receiving a group of religious from the South American country at the Vatican.
“The Pope told us that we have to be very patient in the peace processes, that sometimes we want everything to come out quickly,” the Bishop of Nueva Pamplona, Jorge Alberto Ossa Soto, told a press conference.
He asked us to “surround the leaders who seek peace, whoever they are, from whatever current they are,” he added.
The left-wing president Gustavo Petro, in power since August, promised to negotiate a peaceful solution to the conflict with the groups that remained in arms after the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas.
Petro announced a ceasefire on December 31 with the most powerful armed organizations as a prelude to talks, but two of the truces have already failed.
In his meeting on Friday, the Argentine pontiff spoke for nearly two hours with the bishops, including several from the Amazon regions, with whom he addressed the problems of the jungle and its inhabitants.
“It has been an expected and prepared moment because since 2012 we have not come for the traditional ‘ad limina’ visit,” which is held every five years, said the Archbishop of Bogotá, Luis José Rueda. “The last one was with Benedict XVI,” who resigned from his pontificate the following year, he added.
Due to the pandemic and Francis’ visit to Colombia in 2017, those meetings with the pontiff in the Vatican were postponed.
“The Pope was giving guidance according to the issues that arose. On the family and also on the reality of Colombia in the field of peace and reconciliation of the country,” said Monsignor Orlando Roa Barbosa, Archbishop of Ibagué.
Barbosa indicated that the pope was referring to his 2016 meeting with then-president Juan Manuel Santos, who had promoted the agreement with the FARC, and his predecessor Álvaro Uribe, who opposed them.
Although the meeting did not manage to bring the positions closer, the Pope “mentioned it as something positive, inviting us not to give up in the construction of peace in the country,” he commented.
The pope will receive the second group of Colombian bishops at the Vatican from April 17 to 22, which will be made up of prelates from major cities, including Medellín and Cali.