Pope seeks to encourage Colombian reconciliation with trip

Pope Francis will preside over a reconciliation ceremony between Colombian victims and former guerrillas during a September visit aimed at consolidating the peace process to end Latin America's longest-running armed conflict.

Francis will also pay homage to the patron saint of slaves, the 16th-century Jesuit priest St. Peter Claver, when he travels to the former slave-trading hub of Cartagena.

The Vatican today released details of Francis' Sept. 6-11 trip, his fifth to Latin America and the first papal visit to Colombia since St. John Paul II's in 1986.

Highlights include a Mass in Bogota's Simon Bolivar park that is expected to draw up to a million people. A day later, the pope will attend a prayer for reconciliation in Villavicencio, a traditional stronghold of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.