It was with the pomp and intrigue of a Dan Brown novel that earlier this month Pope Francis made his way into the Aula Paolo VI audience hall, a room the size of an aeroplane hangar in Vatican City. Flanked by the flamboyant Swiss Guard and dark-suited men muttering into…

As the small motorboat chugs to a halt, three travellers, wind-beaten from the three-hour journey along the Atrato river, step on to the muddy banks of Bellavista, an otherwise inaccessible town in the heart of the heavily forested north-west of Colombia. They swing their hessian bags – stuffed with bedsheets, dried…