In Mexico, pope dishes out tough love to elite
Fight violence, corruption, Francis urges
Mexico City — Pope Francis challenged Mexico’s political and ecclesial elites on Saturday to provide their people with security, justice and courageous pastoral care to confront the drug-inspired violence and corruption that are racking the country, delivering a tough-love message to Mexico’s ruling classes on his first full day in the country.
The raucous welcome that Francis received from cheering Mexicans who lined his motorcade route seven-deep contrasted sharply with his pointed criticism of how church and state leaders here have often failed their people, especially the poorest and most marginalized.
“Experience teaches us that each time we seek the path of privileges or benefits for a few to the detriment of the good of all, sooner or later the life of society becomes a fertile soil for corruption, drug trade, exclusion of different cultures, violence and also human trafficking, kidnapping and death, bringing suffering and slowing down development,” he told a meeting of President Enrique Pena Nieto and other government authorities at the presidential palace.
In a subsequent hard-hitting speech to his own bishops, Francis challenged church leaders known for their deference to Mexico’s wealthy and powerful to courageously denounce the “insidious threat” posed by the drug trade and not hide behind their own privilege and careers.
He told them to be true pastors, close to their people, and to develop a coherent plan to help Mexicans “finally escape the raging waters that drown so many, either victims of the drug trade or those who stand before God with their hands drenched in blood, though with pockets filled with sordid money and their consciences deadened.”
The speech was met with tepid applause, with only a handful of bishops standing in ovation.
Francis’ entire five-day trip to Mexico is shining an uncomfortable spotlight on the church’s shortcomings and the government’s failure to solve entrenched social ills that plague many parts of the country — poverty, rampant drug-inspired gangland killings, extortion, disappearances of women, crooked cops and failed public services.
Over the coming days, Francis will travel to the crime-ridden Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec, preach to Indians in poverty-stricken Chiapas, offer solidarity to victims of drug violence in Morelia and finally pay respects to migrants who have died trying to reach the United States with a cross-border Mass in Ciudad Juarez.
The grueling schedule appeared to be already taking a toll. By Saturday evening, Francis, 79, seemed tired and winded. He appeared to doze off during Mass and lost his balance and fell into a chair set up for him to pray before the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
The pope has had an exhausting two days, with backto-back public events, dozens of miles spent standing in his popemobile and a seven-hour time zone difference. In addition, Mexico City’s altitude of more than 7,000 feet provides a challenge to anyone not acclimatized, perhaps more for Francis, who lost part of one lung as a young man.
Francis began his first full day in Mexico with a winding ride into the capital’s historic center to the delight of tens of thousands greeting history’s first Latin American pope. Despite an exhausting Friday that involved a historic embrace with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Francis obliged their demands and stopped to hand out rosaries to the elderly, sick and disabled who gathered in front of his residence.
Later, Francis celebrated his first Mass in Mexico at the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, considered the largest and most important Marian shrine in the world. Thousands packed the square outside to welcome the pontiff, holding balloons and flags in a festive atmosphere befitting a rock star’s welcome.