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Popayan, Colombia, Sep 4, 2019 / 05:29 pm (CNA).- The secretary general of the Colombian bishops’ conference has deplored the assassination of Karina García, a mayoral candidate in the country’s southwest, and called for an end to the bloodshed in the country.

García, 31, was running for mayor of Suárez, in Cauca Department. She was killed in a Sept. 1 ambush along with her mother and four others.

Bishop Elkin Fernando Álvarez Botero, auxiliary bishop of Medellin, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, Sept. 3 that “as a Church we receive with profound sorrow this murder of one of the candidates for local office. We sent a message in the past few days with an appeal to avoid all forms of violence in the political campaigns, but this murder is a sign that we’re returning to those ways of violence which do not allow us to move forward.”

According to BBC World News Spanish edition, prosecutors indicated that the vehicle the victims were riding in was ambushed by another car crosswise in the middle of the road. Several men got out with high powered weapons, who fired on García and those accompanying her. They then pulled the bodies out of the vehicle and incinerated it.

The Colombian Liberal Party candidate had been warning for several weeks that her life was in danger. She began to get worried when unidentified persons began painting her campaign posters black.

Garcia also charged that fake news started to appear about her saying that if she becomes the mayor of Suárez, she would bring in paramilitaries and take away land from the people, accusations which she denied.

“I ask the other candidates and their supporters to not continue making, in face of these armed groups, irresponsible commentaries about my candidacy (…) For God’s sake, don’t be irresponsible! This could have consequences for me, even fatal ones,” García said in a video posted a few days ago.

Álvarez told ACI Prensa, “This is a very serious situation. Just as we are saddened by the death of this candidate we are also grieved by all the lives that are being ended in Colombia because of the violence.”

“We have to get back to valuing life as a gift from God.  Not just that of the community leaders, whose deaths are painful because they’re ending the hopes of the country, but of all human lives,” he said.

The bishop recalled the importance of participating in elections, and encouraged the candidates to run “political campaigns according to democratic principles that actually help and not divide.”

“The message we want to send to the candidates and the voters is let’s not polarize the country any more, let’s seek unity and let’s run principled democratic campaigns.”

Álvarez asked “those who still continue to take the path of violence, to be very aware that with violence, death and eliminating people, we’re not going to achieve anything for the country.”

“The violence has got to end. No more bloodshed,” he concluded.

Regional and municipal elections will be held in Colombia at the end of October. To be elected are governors for the 32 administrative districts representatives to the district assemblies, mayors of 1,099 towns, city council members, and members of the local administrative boards of the national territory.

The BBC also reported that different institutions maintain that between 200 and 400 community leaders have been killed in the last three years.

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Pope John Paul I in an undated file photo. / Vatican Media/CNA.

Rome Newsroom, Oct 13, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
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Belem, Brazil, Aug 20, 2019 / 09:30 am (CNA).- A hospital boat named the “Pope Francis” set sail this week in the Amazon River to bring medical care to rural populations.

“Just as Jesus, who appeared walking on water, calmed the storm and strengthened the faith of the disciples, this boat will bring spiritual comfort and calm to the worries of needy men and women, abandoned to their fate,” Pope Francis said in a letter sent to mark the ship’s launch Aug. 17 in Belem, Brazil.

“In addition to being a beautiful concrete gesture in view of the Synod of Bishops for Amazon, this river hospital is above all a response to the Lord’s mandate, who continues to send His disciples to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick,” the pope said, according to Vatican News.

The hospital boat is the initiative of the Fraternity of Saint Francis of Assisi in the Providence of God in partnership with their local diocese and the Brazilian government.

The Brazilian Franciscans were inspired to create the floating hospital when Pope Francis visited their healthcare facility during World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013. During the visit, the pope encouraged Friar Francisco Belotti to expand his religious order’s charitable works into the Amazon region.

The boat, 32 meters in length, contains an operating room and analysis laboratory, and is able to provide a range of medical services, including X-rays, vaccinations, electrocardiogram,  mammograms, and ultrasounds. The hospital began treating its first patients Aug. 18.

“Barco Hospital Papa Francisco” will travel along the Amazon River to reach people who live in communities in the Amazon only accessible by river.

It is staffed by 20 medical volunteers, 10 crew members, and a Franciscan boat director for each 10-day voyage.

Pope Francis, who has often spoken of the Church as a “field hospital,” added that the Church can also now be seen as a “hospital on the water.”

The pope connected the hospital boat’s launch to the upcoming Special Synod of Bishops from the Pan-Amazonian region, to be held at the Vatican Oct. 6-27. The synod’s working document, entitled “Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology,” discusses the environmental and economic problems faced by Amazonian communities and pastoral approaches to the region.

“The Church cannot but worry about the integral salvation of the human person, which involves promoting the culture of indigenous peoples, talking about their vital needs, accompanying movements and joining forces to defend their rights,” the synod working document states.

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