OMG! Pope may chew coca leaves in Bolivia visit
VATICAN CITY—The Vatican isn’t ruling out that Pope Francis might chew coca leaf—the major ingredient for cocaine—to fend off altitude sickness when he arrives in Bolivia next week.
Francis embarks on a South American tour on Sunday that will take him to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay from July 6 to 12. He is due to land on Wednesday at La Paz international airport, the world’s highest at 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) above sea level.
Bolivia’s Culture Minister Marko Machicao told local media that Francis had asked to chew coca leaves upon his arrival at La Paz.
Unprocessed coca, which is legal in Bolivia and widely chewed in other Andean countries, is considered a mild stimulant similar to coffee. Many indigenous people, including Bolivian President Evo Morales, consider coca a sacred plant and defend its use. The plant, however, is banned by most nations because it is the raw material for cocaine.
Vatican spokesperson the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters on Tuesday that he did not know if the Pope had made such a request. “I am not aware of that,” he said.
Lombardi also said he didn’t know what the Pope would do and had no confirmation that he might chew coca leaf.
Huge fan of tea
He noted, though, that Francis was a huge fan of maté, the typical tea that Argentines sip throughout the day, and that the coca leaf can be brewed into a tea.
“The Pope will do what he thinks is the right thing to do,” Lombardi said. “I gather there are popular uses to respond to altitude sickness, and some drink a tea or chew the leaves. What will the Pope do? We’ll have to see.”
Should the Pope partake of the coca leaf in whatever form, he will be following the example of two predecessors. Pope John Paul II drank tea made from coca leaves during his 1988 visit to Bolivia, while Pope John Paul VI did the same during his visit to the Andes region in 1968.
For health reasons, the 78-year-old Francis, who lost part of one lung to disease when he was a young man, will be in La Paz for only about four hours before moving on to Santa Cruz.
Francis, the first Latin American Pope, is very familiar with and sympathetic to the region’s indigenous cultures, having ministered to both Bolivian and Paraguayan immigrants living in the shantytowns of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires where he served as cardinal of its archdiocese.
Francis will visit Cuba on Sept. 19 and then fly to the United States on Sept. 22. He will become the first Pope to address the US Congress on Sept. 24 in a bid to convince skeptical lawmakers to act on climate change. Both Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, are Catholics.
On Sept. 25, the Pope will address the UN General Assembly to expound on his landmark encyclical on climate change and the environment.
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