Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso announced urgent measures to combat delinquency, drug trafficking, and organized crime in his country. In an address to the nation, the president reported on the authorization of the possession and carrying of civilian weapons for personal defense, along with the use of pepper spray for the same purpose. He also prohibited the manufacture, registration, and possession of handmade weapons, and computer controls and records will be established.
Lasso informed me that they have installed a unified and permanent command post in Guayaquil, headed by himself, which will rotate in the provinces of Santa Elena and Los RÃos. In addition, a state of exception with curfew was decreed between 1:00 and 5:00 as of this Sunday in Planning Zone 8, which includes Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón, as well as the provinces of Santa Elena and Los RÃos. Lasso explained that they have identified fifteen high-value targets that they are tracking and intend to capture.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, in his first public appearance after being released from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, where he was hospitalized for three days for a lung infection. The pontiff reflected on the suffering of Jesus and remarked that he suffered in body, soul, and spirit, the most painful being spiritual suffering. Francis built his reflection around the biblical phrase, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Pope explained that Jesus Christ, in his abandonment, “impels people to seek him and to love him and those who are abandoned.”