VATICAN CORNER
… continued On Saturday February 13, 2016 in Mexico City, Pope Francis met with the president of Mexico, the diplomatic corp. and with the Bishops of Mexico, then held Holy Mass at the Basilica at the Shrine near the ‘Tepeyac’ hill above Mexico City where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego in 1519. In the twentieth century Pope Pius XI declared our Lady of Guadalupe Queen of Mexico and Patroness and Protectress of Latin America. His successor Peter Pius XII stepped this up to include all the Americas. Juan Diego was one of the few native Aztecs Indians who had been baptized and converted to Catholicism by the Franciscans of the conquering Spanish. The apparition he saw of the Blessed Virgin Mary, named by the Spaniards of ‘Guadalupe’ brought together the culture of the Spaniards and Aztecs. ‘Our Lady” appeared as a ‘mestizo’, of mixed race as can be seen in the image that she left during her fourth apparition to Juan Diego on his simple sack-cloth garment tied at the shoulder, known as ’tilma’. That artefact together with a text dating back to the 16th century are all the tangibly remains to explain this apparition but after which eight million native American Indians converted to the Catholic faith. And now in the 21st century the first Latin America Pope has celebrated Holy Mass with the Guadalupe faithful, adding his very own touch to the devotion by crowning her with a gold and silver tiara.
On Sunday at Ecatepec a very dangerous suburb of Mexico City, with 1.6 million people, with one of the highest murder rates in the country, and where hundreds of women have been killed or have disappeared, Pope Francis held Holy Mass in front of 300,000 people. He urged them to create a county free of emigration and ‘merchants of death.’ He touched on two major themes, drug violence and the plight of migrants. He urged his flock to turn the country into a ‘land of opportunity,’ where ‘there will be no need to emigrate in order to dream’ and where they will ‘not have to mourn men and women, young people and children who are destroyed at the hands of the merchants of death.’ Pope Francis then went on to spend the afternoon visiting the Federico Gomez Children’s Hospital in Mexico City. With a staff of 2,700, the hospital takes great care of their little patients with ailments such as cancer, genetic malformation and neurological disorders. Two children ran bells in the presence of the Pope to signal their recoveries. The Pope’s visit was a moment of joy amid the harsh reality of families accompanying their children to the hospital. The families are so poor and without lodging that they have to sleep in the very cold streets outside the hospital. Pope Francis said he told the children that he asked “God to bless you, and to accompany you and your families, and all those people who work in this home and try to ensure that your smiles grow day by day.”
to be continued …Sources: news.va, dailymail.co.uk, Vatican Radio