Former hostage meets the Pope

BY STAFF REPORTER
FORMER COLOMBIAN hostage Ingrid Betancourt has said it was "a dream come true" to meet Pope Benedict XVI.
Her voice still breaking with emotion a few hours after meeting the Pope on Monday, Miss Betancourt said she was fairly certain she broke Vatican protocol "because as soon as I went in. I hugged the Pope and maybe I wasn't supposed to do that".
Miss Betancourt, a FrenchColombian former presidential candidate in Colombia, was freed by Colombian soldiers in early July after more than six years as a hostage. Immediately after her release she had said she wanted to meet Pope Benedict to thank him for his prayers and public appeals for her release. Along with her mother, sister, her sister's children and a cousin, Miss Betancourt spent 25 minutes with the Holy Father at his summer villa in Castel Gandolfo. She spoke afterwards at a press conference in Rome.
Vatican spokesman Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio the atmosphere at the meeting was "very emotional-.
"Her period as a prisoner was a time of great spiritual experience, of prayer. and so she really wanted to tell the Holy Father about the importance faith played in sustaining her during that very difficult period." Fr Lombardi said.
Miss Betancourt told reporters that during the audience she and the Pope prayed together that God would "touch the hardened hearts, the cruel hearts" of the members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who continue to hold dozens of hostages.
She used the press conference to speak directly to her kidnappers. She said: "The world is watching you. Open your hearts to something more than political and military calculations. Make room for peace in your minds."
Miss Betancourt told the press that the Pope listened to her story about her captivity and the sustenance she got from prayer and from reading the Bible, helping her to see how sharing the story could benefit others.
"When I was in the jungle, they forced us to march from dawn to dusk, we were exhausted," she said.
"One day, at the end of a long trek through the jungle. finally in my hammock, feeling deeply anguished, I turned on the radio and I heard the voice of the Pope saying my name. It was like a light and that is why, since the day of my liberation, I wanted to meet and embrace him."
She told reporters she and Pope Benedict also spoke about the Bible. She said: "Our Pope is an immense, immense researcher and scholar of the Bible, this extraordinary instrument we have. Speaking with him, we concluded that it is necessary for people to know what the Bible is. For many people it is a dusty book that smells of mildew."
"I had never read it before my kidnapping," Miss Betancourt said. "In the jungle I read it and re-read it and found the answers to everything. It's a great book."
Miss Betancourt, the daughter of Yolanda Pulecio. a former Miss Colombia turned senator, entered politics in 1990 after a colleague of her mother was gunned down.
She was freed as a result of the Colombian Government's daring rescue operation of July 2, when soldiers dressed in FARC uniforms tricked the paramilitaries into handing over the hostages.
After the bloodless rescue Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe said that the rescue operation "was guided in every way by the light of the Holy Spirit, the protection of our Lord and the Virgin Mary".
The 15 hostages rescued that day Miss Betancourt, three Americans and 11 Colombian soldiers and policemen have since said they spent much of their time in captivity praying the rosary.
Miss Betancourt, a twicemarried lapsed Catholic, prayed daily on a wooden rosary that she made while a hostage. She said of the rescue: "I am convinced this is a miracle of the Virgin Mary. To me it is clear she has had a hand in all of this."
In July she took her family on a pilgrimage to Lourdes to give thanks and to pray for her captors and those who were still hostages.