Pope Francis’ final day in Colombia got off to a bumpy start when he hit his head inside the Popemobile as it traveled down the streets of Cartegena, cutting his eyebrow and bruising his cheek.
After the application of some ice and a butterfly bandage to the eyebrow, the Vatican said the Pope was fine and he continued his full schedule Sunday in this historic town on the Caribbean sea.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Pope Francis, with a bruise around his left eye caused when he accidentally hit his head against the window of the popemobile during a visit to the old sector of Cartagena,Colombia, is greeted by faithful on September 10, 2017.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Colombian faithful take pictures of Pope Francis as he leaves San Pedro Claver church in Cartagena, Colombia on September 10, 2017.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Pope Francis celebrates an open air mass at Contecar, Cartagena's maritime terminal, during the last day of his visit to Colombia on September 10, 2017. Pope Francis prayed Sunday for a peaceful end to Venezuela's "grave crisis" which has left scores dead.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Pope Francis stands on the popemobile surrounded by bodyguards during his departure from Medellin to Bogota on September 9, 2017.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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People wait for the passage of Pope Francis on his way to the San Jose School and Foster Home in Medellin, Colombia, on September 9, 2017.The Pope visited the Colombian city of Medellin, former stronghold of the late drug baron Pablo Escobar, on the fourth day of a papal tour to promote peace.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Pope Francis greets veterans after arriving at the Apiay Naval Base in Villavicencio, Colombia, on Friday, September 8. The Pope is on a five-day visit to Colombia, making good on his promise to travel there once the government and FARC rebels reached a peace deal in their decades-long civil war.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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A woman holding a rosary awaits the start of a Mass in Villavicencio on September 8.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Pope Francis boards a plane at Bogota's Catam military airport as he heads to Villavicencio on September 8.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Francis confers with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos before a ceremony Thursday, September 7, at the presidential palace in Bogota.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Crowds gather in Bogota's Bolivar Square as they wait for Pope Francis on September 7. The Pope and Vatican diplomacy have worked for several years to help Colombia achieve peace.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Francis addresses a welcoming ceremony as he arrives in Bogota on Wednesday, September 6.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Pope Francis prays in the chapel of the Nunciature in Bogota on September 6.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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People welcome Francis to Bogota as he makes his way from the airport to the Nunciature on September 6.
Photos: Pope Francis visits Colombia
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Francis, here with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and first lady Maria Clemencia Rodriguez, greets children during a welcoming ceremony September 6 at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota.
Francis had come to Colombia to talk about peace, and from Cartegena he extended that message to neighboring Venezuela.
“From this city, seat of human rights,” the Pope said, “I make an appeal that all types of violence in political life be renounced.”
Cartagena, where missionary priests worked on behalf of slaves and the oppressed in the 17th century, has become known as a hub of human rights advocacy in Colombia.
Francis used the last stop of his five-day visit to call for an end to all types of human rights violations from prostitution to pollution.
“I think of the abomination of human trafficking, crimes and abuses against minors, the horror of slavery still present in many parts of the world,” Francis said, quoting from his World Day of Peace Message in 2014.
In Medellin on Saturday, Francis made only a brief, unscripted reference to the city’s once notorious drug trade, preferring to focus on the city’s strong Catholic roots and the promise of peace.
The tenuous peace, which the Colombian government negotiated with leftist guerrilla group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in 2016, ending a 52-year civil war, was the reason for Francis’s trip here.
At a home for children orphaned by the war in Medellin, 13-year-old Claudia Yesenia Garcia Ramirez told the Pope that she was the only member of her family to survive a massacre by guerrillas when she was two years old.
“I was shot in the abdomen and a bullet grazed my head, so I spent much time in the hospital,” she told the Pope in the courtyard of the orphanage she now calls home surrounded by hundreds of girls with similar stories.
Claudia’s story was echoed by the people of Villavicencio, site of some of the most brutal guerrilla warfare during the last five decades.
The Pope listened to families who had lost loved ones and to former guerrilla fighters who had repented and given up their weapons.
Francis’ message throughout his five-day visit has been one of forgiveness and reconciliation. It is a hard message for many Colombians who still have the trauma of kidnappings and killings fresh in their minds, but one which seems to have already had an important effect.
The leader of the guerrilla group FARC, Rodrigo Londono, asked forgiveness on Friday for the suffering his group caused to the Colombian people, in an open letter to Pope Francis.
“Your repeated expressions about God’s infinite mercy move me to plead your forgiveness for any tears and pain that we have caused the people of Colombia,” Londono wrote.
