VATICAN CORNER
Pope Francis will be visiting Mexico from February 12th thru 18th, 2016, traveling from south to north and ending at the border town of Juarez, just across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas. This route is intended to represent the difficult path that migrants take to reach the U.S. and he will make an impassioned plea for their plight. The Mexico the Pope will visit has been experiencing many challenges: the loss of religious faith, the spread of Protestantism, slowed population growth due to migration, homicide and lower birth rates, a decade of brutal criminal warfare, economic slump, and incidents of human rights abuses, and corruption. After the 1910 revolution, the Mexican government turned against the church, confiscating its property and prohibiting priests from wearing their collars and robes in public. That trend was reversed and diplomatic ties with the Holy See were established in 1994. Despite all that, Mexico with its 98 million Catholics ( 80%) is second only to Brazil with 124 million in the total number of Catholics per country. In comparison the Philippines have 80 million; the U.S., 66 million and Italy, 50 million. Pope Francis’s recent comments have incensed some government officials. He said “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, I, of course, will not cover any of that up. To the contrary, I want to exhort you to fight every day against corruption, against trafficking, against war, disunity, organized crime.” He said to the Mexican people “You are living your little piece of war.” He will visit: Mexico City, Ecatepec, Tuxtla Gutierrez, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Morelia and Juarez, and will pray before Our Lady of Guadalupe. In Chiapas, Mexico’s most impoverished states located on Mexico’s border with Guatemala and home to many semiautonomous indigenous communities, Francis will lead prayers using indigenous languages, such as Tzotzil and Chol, and will feature Maya dance and symbols. He will issue rules to formally allow the use of indigenous languages in church services, something that former Pope Benedict XVI, had discouraged. Pope Francis told the Mexicans “I am not going to Mexico as one of the Three Wise Men, loaded with [gifts], messages, ideas, solutions to problems. “I am going to Mexico as a pilgrim to seek the wealth of faith that you all have. I want to become infected with that wealth of faith, to live that faith with you. I am going with my heart open so that it might fill with all you can give me.” To be continued
…Sources: latimes.com, news.va, cruxnow.com