Pope Francis kicked off his first day in Mexico yesterday with a popemobile ride past adoring crowds, launching into a day that started with tough-love speeches to the country’s political and church elite and ended with a silent prayer before the Virgin of Guadalupe at the largest Marian shrine in the world.
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Theologically, one of the most interesting aspects of Francis’s Mexico trip will be how he teaches about a church and religious tradition that is quite different from the overwhelmingly white and culturally European Catholic culture of Argentina.
Pope Francis urged Mexican officials on Saturday to end a system of corruption and violence that has been exasperated by a unceasing drug trade, and to provide the country’s citizens with a semblance of justice that works for the “public good”.
The Guadalupe image shows Mary in a blue cloak decorated with stars and surrounded by brilliant yellow light.
But he didn’t spare them, either. “It was a blessing”, said Lila Aldana who traveled from Guatemala to see the pope.
The speech was met with tepid applause, with only a handful of bishops standing in ovation. The pope is scheduled to visit a prison in the border city of Juarez during his visit. He noted the risks of migration and the heartbreak of separated families for the promise of a new life.
The meeting in Havana, Cuba, on Friday between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill was the first between the two church’s leaders.
He arrived in Mexico after nightfall and was welcomed by a rapturous crowd at the airport that repeatedly chanted, “Francis, brother, you’re already Mexican”.
A traditional Mariachi band played as the pope’s private jet touched down in the capital, and people lined the streets to light the path of the popemobile with mobile phones.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto says he shares Pope Francis’ concerns about the “great challenges… doubts and uncertainties” that the nation faces.
Those who identify themselves as Christian must be exemplars of dialogue and solidarity, he said, and those who truly value politics as public service must as well.
Mexico’s population is about 120 million; 28 percent of them are 14 years old or younger and another 18 percent are 15-24 years old.
Church observers said the pope’s message was unprecedented for Mexico, where the bishops’ conference has become quite conservative over the past quarter-century as the Church and government restored relations.
Speaking in his native Spanish before bishops inside Mexico City’s main cathedral earlier on Saturday, the Argentine-born pontiff urged religious leaders to do more to help migrants, “pouring balm on their injured feet” through social and charity programs.
The following days will take the pope to some of Mexico’s notoriously poor and violent regions.
Pope Francis is starting his second full day in Mexico with a healthy dose of the country’s hospitality.
“The magnitude of this phenomenon, the complexity of its causes, its immensity and its scope which devours like a metastasis, and the gravity of the violence which divides with its distorted expressions, do not allow us as pastors of the Church to hide behind anodyne denunciations”, the pope said.
Rather, he said the horrors of drug violence required “prophetic courage” from the church and a pastoral plan that involves families, parishes, schools and communities.
Hundreds of thousands of people gathered Sunday as Pope Francis began what was expected to be the biggest event of his five-day trip to Mexico: a Mass in the capital’s crime-ridden suburb of Ecatepec, where drug violence, gangland-style executions and kidnappings are a daily fact of life.
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For decades, the Russian Orthodox told the Vatican that a meeting between the patriarch and pope was impossible because of the activities of Latin-rite Catholics in Russia and, especially, the Eastern-rite Catholics in Ukraine.
