VATICAN CORNER

continued … On February 17, 2016, Pope Francis’ trip through Mexico reached its final stop at the northern border city of Juárez across the Rio Grande from El Paso, and thus he symbolically traced the route of migrants through Mexico, focusing on their need for human dignity. Juárez once had the highest murder rate in Mexico and possibly, all of Latin America. In 2011, in a city of 1.3 million there were 10 homicides every day, driving an estimated 100,000 people across the border into El Paso and neighboring Las Cruces, New Mexico, many of whom remain out of fear. However, the apparent victory of one drug gang over its rival, as well as social programs launched by private business has significantly reduced the killing. For three weeks before the Pope arrived, worker in Juárez cleaned and painted streets, and on the day of the Pope’s arrival, local government suspended the sale of alcohol. An estimated 70,000 people formed a human chain to protect the papal motorcade along the 25-mile route from the airport to the border. Francis visited a prison in Juárez, riding through in a motorized cart among the 3,000-strong tattooed congregation. He shook hands and hugged inmates and called on the men and women who had committed horrific acts to find themselves there, to end their cycle of murderous violence, cut their gang ties and become ‘prophets’. Then he visited a college and spoke with workers and business leaders. Talking to the group, he condemned excessing capitalism. He said “God will hold the slave drivers of our days accountable, and we must do everything to make sure that these situations do not happen again. “The flow of capital cannot decide the flow and life of people.” Later at the edge of the Rio Grande at a memorial built for his visit and dedicated to immigrants who died crossing the border, Pope Francis prayed. It has one enormous cross, several smaller crosses and a ramp that slowly rises to provide a view of the border fence and the U.S. Pope Francis laid a bouquet of flowers and read the sign across the river in El Paso: “Immigrant Lives Matter.” At the fairgrounds 300 feet from the border, he presided over a cross-border Mass with 200,000 people on the Mexican side, and a small group of people from the Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso, along with police and border guards on the U.S. side. Pope Francis saluted “our brothers and sisters” in El Paso who watched the live broadcast of the Mass at the Sun Bowl Stadium, adding that thanks to technology, “we can pray, sing and celebrate together … and that no border can prevent us from sharing.” He decried the global “human tragedy” that forces people to migrate unwillingly, risking death — “each step, a journey laden with grave injustices: the enslaved, the imprisoned and extorted.” He prayed for compassion and conversation. One resident of Juárez said “we came to get his blessing, it’s a way to give us hope, having him with us.” Though he said he doesn’t expect the Mass to bring an end to the violence in his native Chihuahua state, in the long run, “this will change a lot of people’s consciences.”

Sources: news.va, cruxnow.com, dailymail.co.uk, latimes.com, theatlantic.com