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Hundreds of Thousands Hear Pope Francis as Tour Begins in Ecuador
Throng in Ecuador Hears Pope’s Message on Family Life
(about 1 hour later)
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador — Pope Francis on Monday gave the first Mass of his Latin American tour before hundreds of thousands of faithful who waited for hours under a broiling sun in a large dirt field in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city.
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador — Standing above a huge dirt field engulfed by hundreds of thousands of followers, Pope Francis on Monday used the first full day of his Latin American trip to ruminate on the anguish and joy of family life, alluding to the broader debate among many Catholic prelates about whether church teachings should be changed regarding gay people and the divorced.
Wearing richly decorated vestments made by local nuns, he gave a 17-minute sermon in which he stressed the theme of the family.
Francis has arrived in Latin America as a wildly popular returning son, a source of pride as the first pontiff from a continent where for decades he helped shape the Roman Catholic Church. He came with an extensive agenda and is expected to raise concerns about environmental destruction, the rights of indigenous people and the church’s legacy in the region.
“In the heart of the family, no one is rejected,” he said. “Everyone is worth the same.”
But he began on Monday with family, a theme central to Catholic life, if also now contested in the politics of the church.
Before the Mass began, Francis rode through the city in a white car and then onto the dirt field in a popemobile. He was engulfed by people, on the streets watching his procession and then in the field. Throngs of people were lined for miles as his procession passed.
“In the heart of the family, no one is rejected,” Francis said. “Everyone is worth the same.”
Following the sermon, volunteers spread out among the crowd to give communion to many of the congregants.
Parsing Francis’s speeches can be tricky work, as he deliberately resists being pigeonholed. But he is organizing a major October meeting, or synod, at the Vatican in which church leaders are expected to debate whether the church should change its teachings on family — including contentious issues like whether divorced people should be allowed to receive the sacraments and how the church should receive gay men and women.
For the great majority of the faithful in the open field, Francis was a tiny speck, if he was visible at all, and the stage from which he spoke a distant mirage in the heat. But they could watch him on large television screens mounted around the park.
Francis never mentioned gays or the divorced directly on Monday, but many analysts believe he wants to push the church to take a more accommodating stance. He pointed to the importance of the October meeting to “consider concrete solutions and aids to the many difficult and significant challenges facing families in our time.”
Many people brought plastic stools to sit on and umbrellas to ward off the sun. Vendors circulated among them, selling food and souvenirs.
He asked for people to pray, so that Christ “can take even what might seem to us impure,” scandalous or threatening and turn it “into a miracle.”
Many arrived before dawn, and people continued pouring into the park throughout the morning, often arriving in extended families, with grandparents, children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren — the littlest ones often carried on a parent’s shoulders.
The comments, constructed on a biblical lesson about the wedding feast of Cana, seemed aimed at the church debate, though Vatican officials argued otherwise.
In places, the scene had a carnival atmosphere. Vendors hawked popcorn, fruit salad, hot dogs fried in bread and other local delicacies. Others sold souvenirs, nearly all emblazoned with a photo of Francis: key rings, coffee mugs, crosses, flags, T-shirts, headbands.
“The pope hopes the synod will find a way to help people move from situations of sin to situations of grace,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman. “He is not referring to anything specific.”
At times it felt like a Latin American political rally, with bands playing upbeat pope-themed songs from the main stage to warm up the crowd before his arrival.
It was the first opportunity for Francis, who arrived on the continent on Sunday, to begin shaping the message of his trip.
“When I got here this morning, I told my wife it felt like we were entering into a kingdom,” said Julio Bustamante, 47, a worker in a plastic factory who wore a T-shirt with a picture of a waving Francis. “It felt like I was reaching a goal that I’ve had for a long time, like achieving peace, salvation.”
Less than a month ago, the pope released a blistering critique of capitalism in an encyclical about environmental degradation and climate change. He is now visiting a country where the president, Rafael Correa, who identifies as a socialist, has been criticized for vowing to open protected areas of the Amazon for oil exploration. But the pope steered clear of the topic in his public remarks.
Mr. Bustamante, who arrived with his wife, Carmen García, 42, at 4 a.m., had also been on hand the one other time a pope had visited Ecuador: when Pope John Paul II came to Guayaquil in 1985. He said he was impressed that Francis, the first pontiff from Latin America, chose Ecuador as the site of his first visit as pope to a Spanish-speaking country in the region. He previously visited Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken.
In the afternoon, Francis planned to fly to the capital, Quito, for a private meeting with Mr. Correa. The president has been the subject of strong protests for proposing to raise taxes and for a belligerent governing style. Critics accuse him of seeking to piggyback on Francis’ message of equality by placing billboards with papal statements all over the capital that support Mr. Correa’s political agenda.
“He has made us his priority,” Mr. Bustamante said. “That makes me very happy.”
His opponents also used the days before Francis’ visit to stage protests against Mr. Correa.
Francis began his visit to his home continent on Monday morning, meeting children and people with disabilities at a local sanctuary. After the Mass, he was expected to have lunch with an old friend, a 91-year-old priest at a Jesuit school where he once sent interns.
By choosing to begin his trip in Ecuador, a small country on a large continent, Francis is again underscoring his emphasis on the forgotten peripheries. The decision ignited national pride among many Ecuadoreans.
This was the first opportunity for Francis, who arrived on Sunday, to begin shaping the message of his trip. Less than a month ago, the pope released a blistering critique of capitalism in an encyclical about environmental degradation and climate change. He is now visiting a country where the president, Rafael Correa, has been criticized for vowing to open protected areas of the Amazon for oil exploration.
Helicopters hovered above, beaming images to television stations, as the procession bearing the pope’s white vehicle passed throngs of spectators en route to Samanes Park, which included the immense dirt field that was the setting for the huge outdoor Mass.
After his visit to Guayaquil, Francis is scheduled to return to Quito, Ecuador, for a private meeting with Mr. Correa. The president has also been the subject of strong protests for proposing to raise taxes, and has been accused of wrapping himself in Francis’ popularity, placing billboards all over the capital. Opponents have also used the Francis visit to stage protests against Mr. Correa.
Samanes Park is named after a tropical shade tree, but it offered no shade and no trees. Many people had arrived before dawn, bring plastic stools and umbrellas to ward off the sun, as vendors circulated, hawking food and souvenirs like Francis key chains, crosses, T-shirts and headbands. Large extended families, with grandparents, children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren arrived in groups — the littlest ones often carried on a parent’s shoulders. Priests were stationed at green-topped tents, taking confession as dozens of people waited in line.
On Sunday, met by indigenous children in traditional garb and a stiff Andean wind that blew the white skullcap off his head as he emerged from his airplane, Francis arrived here to start a three-nation tour that will take him to some of the poorest and yet most environmentally rich countries of his native continent.
“When I got here this morning, I told my wife it felt like we were entering into a kingdom,” said Julio Bustamante, 47, a factory worker who arrived at 4 a.m. and wore a T-shirt bearing a picture of Francis. “It felt like I was reaching a goal that I’ve had for a long time, like achieving peace, salvation.”
“I give thanks to God for having allowed me to return to Latin America,” he said after being greeted on the tarmac with a hug by Mr. Correa.
Mr. Bustamante also came to see Pope John Paul II when he visited Guayaquil in 1985. He said he was pleased that Francis had chosen Ecuador for his first visit to a Spanish-speaking country in the region (Francis previously visited Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken). Mr. Bustamante and his wife have five children, and he said that family “should have priority.”
Francis later drove through the streets of Quito, the capital, standing in the back of a white car with open sides. Thousands of enthusiastic followers packed the route, throwing flower petals, locally made Panama hats and other items at him. At one point a person ran up to the car and held up a small child dressed in white, and the pope reached out to touch the child on the head.
“The family is what is with us always,” he said.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, estimated the crowd at 500,000.
Standing on a stage beneath a yellow metal roof, Francis used the wedding feast of Cana — in which by the biblical account Jesus ultimately turned water from ablution jars into wine — as a metaphor in which the wine symbolizes happiness, love and abundance.
Francis brings his message of a church in transformation to a region that contains nearly four out of 10 of the world’s Roman Catholics, but that has seen many faithful leave in recent years to join Protestant denominations or abandon organized religion altogether.
“This lack of ‘wine’ can also be due to unemployment, illness and difficult situations which our families may experience,” he said.
“My heart is beating faster and faster,” said Filiberto Rojas, 38, a Colombian businessman who flew to Quito on Saturday and set up a small tent outside the park where Francis is to preside over a huge open-air Mass on Tuesday. The faithful will not be allowed into the park until Monday afternoon, but Mr. Rojas said the wait was worth it: “We haven’t had a pope like this in a long time, a humble pope, a pope of the poor, a pope of the people.”
Francis’s appearance was the centerpiece of a day that began with a brief visit to children, the elderly and the disabled. He was scheduled to have at least one moment of tranquillity during the hectic day.
Francis comes to Ecuador shortly after releasing the landmark encyclical on the environment. In it he exhorted the world to take prompt action to halt potentially catastrophic climate change and ecological degradation, which he warned were partly caused by unchecked economic development and a culture of consumerism.
Following the Mass, he traveled to a Jesuit school in the city. Decades ago, as a Jesuit leader in Argentina, Francis (then Jorge Mario Bergoglio) befriended Francisco Cortés, a priest in Guayaquil known as Father Paquito, who taught at a local Jesuit college.
He is expected to return to those themes in Ecuador, a country of great biological and environmental diversity, with the Amazon rain forest, the Andes Mountains and the Galápagos Islands. It is also a place that is highly sensitive to the conflicts between economic growth and environmental protection.
For years, Francis sent his Argentine students to learn under Father Paquito, and the two men struck up a friendship. Father Paquito, now 91, told the local media that he had not seen his old friend in 30 years. Francis is having lunch at the Jesuit college before flying back to Quito.
Mr. Correa has vowed to open a previously protected section of remote Amazon jungle to oil exploration, over the fierce objections of environmentalists, and indigenous groups have protested that the government has failed to take into account their objections to that and other projects.
Asked by local reporters what he would say to the pope, Father Paquito said he would simply ask, “Why did you remember me?”
Francis, 78, has planned a large open-air Mass on Monday in Guayaquil, and then one in Quito the next day. He will travel to Bolivia on Wednesday and from there to Paraguay. The three nations are among the smallest and poorest countries on the continent.
Francis, who was born in Argentina, visited Brazil in 2013 shortly after becoming pope. This is his first visit to Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America since he became pope.
He arrives in Ecuador at a time of political tension, which has become more acute as his visit has focused world attention on the tiny country. For several weeks, protesters have taken to the streets in some of the largest demonstrations against the government since Mr. Correa became president in 2007.
The protests started as middle-class opposition to proposals that would have significantly increased taxes on inheritances and capital gains. But they soon became expressions of discontent over Mr. Correa’s often belligerent style of governing, austerity measures, regulations affecting the health system and other complaints.
Mr. Correa withdrew the tax proposals, which he had described as a way to redistribute wealth here.
Upon welcoming Francis at the airport, Mr. Correa gave a speech in which he referred to statements by the pope decrying unequal distribution of wealth.
Francis, dressed in a floor-length white vestment with a silver cross on a chain around his neck, thanked the president for his “consonance with my thoughts,” adding, with apparent humor, “You have quoted me too much.”
In what may be seen here as an allusion to the nation’s bitter political divisions, Francis went on to say, “We can find in the Gospel the keys that will allow us to confront today’s challenges, appreciating our differences, fostering dialogue and participation without exclusion.”
And he urged people to give “special attention to our most fragile brothers and the most vulnerable minorities, the debt that is still owed by Latin America.”
The visit by Francis, who arrived after a 12-and-a-half hour flight from Rome, is just the second by a pope to Ecuador. Pope John Paul II was here in 1985.
Government workers have been given Monday and Tuesday off. Thousands of visitors are expected to flood in from neighboring Colombia and Peru and other nations in the region.
Newspapers carried banner headlines on Sunday announcing the pope’s arrival. Souvenir sellers were offering T-shirts, wooden crosses, Francis key chains and other memorabilia. Churches sold $5 “pope kits,” small cloth bags containing a white T-shirt with the official logo of the papal visit, a blue kerchief, a plastic rosary and a souvenir booklet.
Yet not everyone here rushed to welcome the pope or snap up a souvenir.
“He’s just a normal human being like any one of us,” said Arturo Norero, a pastor at a Baptist church here, where Protestant groups like his have been steadily drawing disaffected Catholics.
“There is so much hullabaloo and millions of dollars are being spent on his visit, which, if we look at it logically, could be better spent on the basic needs of our society,” said Mr. Norero, a former Catholic who has a brother who is a priest.
Another pastor, Luis Miguel Hernández, 28, said Francis’ arrival in Ecuador could be a sign that a biblical prophecy of the end of the world was at hand.
“We see that we’re getting close to the end times,” Mr. Hernández said.
