A Colombian Bishop’s plans to get rid of drug smuggling and poverty in the city of Buenaventura this week by sprinkling holy water from a helicopter.
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Monsignor Ruben Dario Jaramillo Montoya, the bishop of Buenaventura will exorcise the whole city on July 14 to get rid of violence, drug trafficking, and poverty. He declared his plan after a 10-year-old girl was tortured and murdered earlier this year.
“We have to drive the devil out of Buenaventura, to see if we can restore the peace and tranquility that our city has lost due to so many crimes, acts of corruption and with so much evil and drug trafficking that invades our port,” the bishop said.
“We want to go around the whole of Buenaventura, from the air, and pour holy water on to it to see if we exorcise and get out all those demons that are destroying our port, so that God’s blessing comes and gets rid of all the wickedness that is in our streets.”
Colombian army will provide its helicopter for the exorcism during the city’s yearly patron saints’ festival.
The Colombian city of Buenaventura was named the country’s most violent place in 2014. Human rights organizations have said that the city is infested by criminal gangs.
Buenaventura is known to be a strategic port on the drug route to the United States. In 2010, an attack with a car bomb left nine people dead and more than 20 injured.
However, in recent years, the city has improved after citizen-led actions. Even then, 51 homicides have been reported by local media in the first five months of 2019, 20 more than last year.