"Ecuador - together with other countries with Amazonian land -- has a chance to practice the teachings of integral ecology," Pope Francis said at a meeting with social organizations in the South American nation.
A landmark Church statement on the environment, due to be officially released on Thursday, places the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics firmly in the camp of those who say climate change is mainly man-made.
In a move long resisted by conservative Catholics and the Salvadoran right, Archbishop Oscar Romero will be declared "blessed" in a ceremony Saturday led by the pope's envoy, Cardinal Angelo Amato, in San Salvador's central plaza.
Campaigners on climate change believe that a signal from Pope Francis that the Church considers global warming a grave danger could influence the global discussion on the severity of the problem, what has caused it and what can be done.
The first South American pope played a key role in secret negotiations between the United States and Cuba that led to the surprise announcement in December that they would seek to restore diplomatic ties after more than 50 years of tensions.
According to the National Catholic Reporter, the pope also said it was "not true" and an "insult" to suggest that women's rights movements should take the blame for declining marriage rates. Doing so "is a form of chauvinism that always wants to control the woman," Francis said.
Cuba is one of the least Catholic nations in Latin America, where along with a sizable number of the religiously unaffiliated, both Pentecostalism and Afro-Cuban Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religion, are thriving. The pope's announced visit to the island is probably more about politics than religion, one expert said.
Rev. David Solano, a sociologist and director of the Juan XIII School, acknowledged the trend away from Catholicism in the region: “We see this as a pastoral challenge.”
