“That’s not right,” the Pope noted. The slight was all the more notable as the Argentine pontiff praised the social and economic reforms of Mr Morales when he arrived from Ecuador on the second leg of a three-country tour of his native South America.

But Bolivian officials explained that the gift was a replica of a crucifix made by Father Luis Espinal, a human-rights activist who was killed by a paramilitary death squad in 1980. The Pope had earlier prayed at the site of the murder of his fellow Jesuit en route to the presidential palace.