Pope fulfills dream of former hostage

In visit to pontiff, Betancourt tells of ordeal in jungle

Pope Benedict XVI welcomed Ingrid Betancourt yesterday at his summer residence, south of Rome. She was rescued in July after more than six years of detention by leftist guerrillas. (Francesco Sforza/ AFP/ Getty Images)

ROME - Former hostage Ingrid Betancourt was able at last to thank Pope Benedict XVI yesterday, the man whose voice she said reached deep into the Colombian jungle "like a light" to comfort her during captivity.

Betancourt, who was rescued in July by Colombia's military after more than six years in the hands of leftist guerrillas, said her private audience with the pope was "a dream come true."

"From my first moment of freedom I wanted to meet and embrace" him, she said at a news conference in Rome, during which she was frequently on the verge of tears.

The former presidential candidate in Colombia credited her religious faith with helping her survive in the years after her kidnapping by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as FARC.

She told Benedict that she found comfort in her Catholic faith and in the knowledge that millions of people in Europe and across the world were calling for the kidnappers to free her and her fellow prisoners.

Betancourt told the pope that once, after a daylong forced march between rebel camps in the jungle, she collapsed in a hammock, exhausted, and dispirited, only to switch on the radio and hear Benedict's voice speaking of her plight.

"It's hard to explain the psychological effect this has on a prisoner, what it meant to know we hadn't been forgotten at a time when we thought we didn't exist," Betancourt said. "The voice of the Holy Father was like a light."

Betancourt said she told the pope about her distress for the hundreds of hostages FARC still holds and her concern for Colombia's future after decades of civil war.

"The pope is pained by the suffering of the prisoners," she said. "I know his prayers are also dedicated to obtaining the freedom of all the prisoners and peace in my country."

Betancourt's eyes filled with tears as she made repeated appeals to the heads of FARC to lay down their arms and free the remaining hostages.

In the Colombian city of Cali, meanwhile, four people were killed and about 20 wounded when a guerrilla car bomb exploded, damaging a court building in one of the worst urban attacks this year, Reuters quoted authorities as saying.