Pope Francis urges care for environment

Pope Francis flew to Bolivia after drawing about 1.5m people to Masses in Ecuador on the first leg of a “homecoming” tour, where he urged the world to take better care of the environment and the poor.

The Argentine-born pontiff spent his last few hours at a home for the elderly in Ecuador’s highland capital Quito and a shrine just outside the city where he met priests, nuns and seminarians.

He then fly to high-altitude La Paz, in Bolivia.

Outside La Paz, Francis stopped at the spot where the body of Jesuit Father Luis Espinal Camps was found in 1980. The priest, who was a strong supporter of the rights of miners, was tortured and murdered by paramilitaries.

Francis was to meet with Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has won widespread support with folksy charm and prudent spending from a natural gas bonanza to cut poverty.

Today he will be in Santa Cruz in western Bolivia. There, he will say a Mass and tomorrow he will visit the notoriously violent Palmasola prison.

In Ecuador, the pope held two Masses, both attended by hundreds of thousands of people, in Quito and the coastal city of Guayaquil. He also met with President Rafael Correa, who has faced anti-government protests in recent weeks.

“The pope has opened our hearts with his messages, helping us to move forward, especially important in a country where we lack faith, unity and understanding,” said Victoria Zambrano, a 38-year-old doctor who attended the Mass in Quito.

Ecuador highlights the inherent difficulties within the pope’s recent environmental encyclical.

The country earns around one-half of its foreign income from oil, yet is also one of the world’s most biodiverse nations, with more endangered species than anywhere else. A large amount of the oil that the socialist government hopes will help feed the poor, though, is locked up under rainforest land.