Pope plans a symbolically freighted trip to Mexico
MEXICO CITY (TNS) — Pope Francis travels to Mexico this week, saying he wants to “live the faith” of the overwhelmingly Catholic country but will not shy away from confronting issues of violence and corruption that could make his governmental hosts quite uncomfortable.
History’s first pontiff from the Americas will also stand on Mexico’s border with the United States and make an impassioned plea for the plight of immigrants. His entire pilgrimage from southern to northern Mexico is meant to represent the perilous route that migrants take to reach the U.S.
This is the Argentine pope’s fourth trip to Latin America, home to Roman Catholic communities that are the largest in the world but have faced challenges from the spread of Protestantism, loss of faith and slowed population growth because of migration, homicide and lower birth rates.
The Mexico that Francis visits, following the
well-worn path of his two predecessors, is enduring a decade-old wave of brutal criminal and “narco” warfare, a spate of egregious human rights abuses, an economic slump and official corruption that has helped take President Enrique Pena Nieto’s approval rating to historic lows.
“You are living your little piece of war,” Francis said last week in a videotaped message to Mexicans via the semiofficial Notimex news agency.
“The Mexico of violence, the Mexico of corruption, the Mexico of drug trafficking, the Mexico of cartels, is not
the Mexico that our mother (the Virgin Mary) wants,” he added. “I, of course, will not cover any of that up.
“To the contrary,” he added, “I want to exhort you to fight every day against corruption, against trafficking, against war, disunity, organized crime.”