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Pope to Mexican youth: Jesus doesn’t want you to be hit men Pope concludes Mexico trip with visits to prison, US border
(about 3 hours later)
MORELIA, Mexico — Pope Francis urged Mexico’s young people to resist the lure of easy money from dealing drugs and instead value themselves during a visit Tuesday to the heartland of the nation’s narcotics trade. “Jesus, who gives us hope, would never ask us to be hit men,” he said. MEXICO CITY — Pope Francis wraps up his trip to Mexico on Wednesday with some of his most anticipated events: a visit in a Ciudad Juarez prison just days after a riot in another lockup killed 49 inmates and a stop at the Texas border when immigration is a hot issue for the U.S. presidential campaign.
Francis brought a message of hope to Mexico’s next generation during a youth pep rally in Morelia, capital of Michoacan state, a major methamphetamine production hub and drug-trafficking route. He also scheduled a meeting with Mexican workers, grassroots groups and employers in an encounter at which he was likely to repeat his mantra on the need for dignified work for all and “land, labor and lodging.”
It was by far the most colorful event of his visit, featuring butterfly-winged dancers and mariachi bands — and a crowd so enthusiastic that Francis got pulled over by people grabbing at him. Francis’ final events cap a whirlwind five-day visit that focused heavily on the injustices faced by Mexico’s poorest, most oppressed and vulnerable to the country’s drug-fueled violence. He sought to offer comfort while taking Mexico’s political and religious leaders to task for failing to do good for their people.
Improvising at times from his text, Francis told the crowd that he understood that for young Mexicans it was difficult to feel their worth “when you are continually exposed to the loss of friends or relatives at the hands of the drug trade, of drugs themselves, of criminal organizations that sow terror.” The pope makes a point of going to prisons on nearly every foreign trip, part of his longtime ministry to inmates and his belief that the lowest in society deserve dignity.
But, he insisted, by following Christ they would find the strength to say “it is a lie to believe that the only way to live, or to be young, is to entrust yourselves to drug dealers or others who do nothing but sow destruction and death.” He has denounced abuse of pre-trial detention, called life sentences a “hidden death penalty” and urged a worldwide end to capital punishment. As pope, he continues to check in with Argentine prisoners he ministered to as archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Francis offered a similar appeal to Mexican priests and nuns during a Mass earlier in the day in a Morelia stadium. There, he told the country’s clerics that they must fight injustice and not resign themselves to the drug-fueled violence and corruption around them. In his penitentiary encounters, Francis often urges inmates not to give up hope, telling them that he, too, has sinned and been forgiven. He criticizes prison overcrowding, the slow pace of justice and lack of rehabilitation.
“What temptation can come to us from places often dominated by violence, corruption, drug trafficking, disregard for human dignity and indifference in the face of suffering and vulnerability? What temptation might we suffer over and over again when faced with this reality, which seems to have become a permanent system?” Francis asked. But he also tells inmates not to let their suffering lead to violence — a message he may repeat given the deadly riot last week at Monterrey’s Topo Chico prison, where rival gang factions bloodied each other with hammers, cudgels and makeshift knives. Eight more inmates were injured Tuesday in a brawl at another prison.
“I think we can sum it up in one word: resignation.” Ciudad Juarez’s Prison No. 3, where Francis planned to speak to inmates and visiting family members, is relatively calm these days. But it has seen violent clashes before that reflected the chaos outside its walls.
It was a clear reference to the situation in Michoacan as well as the nation at large, where gangs and drug lords have thrived thanks in part to the complicity of police and other public authorities. That corruption came to light most recently in the case of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who escaped for a second time from a maximum security prison in July, and was recaptured after an October meeting with actor Sean Penn. Not long ago Juarez was considered the murder capital of the world, as cartel-backed gang warfare fed homicide rates that hit 230 per 100,000 residents in 2010. A rash of killings of women, many of them poor factory workers who just disappeared, attracted international attention.
While Francis gave a message of hope to residents of Morelia, his visit was also a symbolic vote of confidence for the city’s archbishop, Alberto Suarez Inda. Times have changed. Last year, the city’s homicide rate was about 20 per 100,000 people, roughly on par with Mexico’s nationwide average of 14 per 100,000 — and well below what is being seen in current hotspots of drug violence such as the Pacific resort city Acapulco and surrounding Guerrero state.
Like Francis, Suarez Inda has called for Mexican bishops to be closer to their people and not act like bureaucrats or princes. Last year Francis made him a cardinal — an unambiguous sign that Francis wants “peripheral” pastors like Suarez Inda at the helm of the church hierarchy. Many businesses that closed during Juarez’s darkest years have reopened. Tourists are again crossing over from the United States to shop and dine. People say they no longer have to leave parties early to avoid being on the streets after dark.
Since beginning his Mexico trip Friday night, Francis has repeatedly taken to task the Mexican church leadership, many of whom are closely linked to Mexico’s political and financial elite and are loath to speak out on behalf of the poor and victims of social injustice. “At least now we can go out. We go to the parks. We can walk around a little more at that time of night,” Lorena Diaz said, standing under a huge banner of Francis hanging from her second-floor balcony.
“Sometimes the violence has made us give up, either out of discouragement, habit or fear,” said Fausto Mendez, a 23-year-old seminarian who attended Tuesday’s Mass. “That’s why the pope comes to tell us not to be afraid to do the right thing.” Diaz, who along with about 30 family members secured tickets for Wednesday’s Mass, has followed news of Francis’ tour and welcomed his calls for Mexicans not to tolerate corruption and violence.
“Although he spoke strongly to the bishops, it was also directed at us,” said Uriel Perez, 20-year-old seminarian at Tuesday’s Mass. “Because the pope is demanding and he wants us to be prepared and on the streets shoulder to shoulder with our flock.” “He’s telling us to get out of the trenches, not to close ourselves off,” Diaz said.
Priests have also been victims of the violence. Since 1988, 38 priests have been killed and two more are missing, according to the Catholic Multimedia Center, which tracks violence against religious people in Mexico. Twenty-eight were killed since 2006, half of them in regions plagued by drug violence, including Michoacan , Guerrero and Veracruz, including some who suffered signs of torture. After the prison stop, Francis set a meeting with workers and advocacy groups at which he was expected to address poverty and income inequality.
Much of Michoacan is part of a region called Tierra Caliente, or the Hot Lands, known for both its blistering temperatures and brutal tactics by gangsters eager to control lucrative drug-production territory and smuggling routes. Juarez’s proximity to the U.S. has brought a job boom at hundreds of foreign-owned assembly plants known as “maquiladoras” that manufacture clothes, electronics and other goods to be shipped north. But many workers say conditions can be poor and pay low. At a recent demonstration, protesters said they were struggling to get by on wages of just $45 a week.
By 2013, the pseudo-religious Knights Templar cartel was widely kidnapping and extorting money and dominating the state’s economic and political scene, so much so that local farmers took up arms against them. But the uprising by the vigilante-style “self-defense” forces brought little peace to the state, with the groups fighting among themselves even as new criminal gangs sprang up. Francis also planned to visit the border with El Paso, Texas, where he was expected to stop at the fence, give a blessing in honor of migrants on the other side and pray for those who died trying to get there.
“I’m excited about the pope’s visit, but the reality is that people are afraid. Right now there is a festive atmosphere and a lot of police, but in the day-to-day it’s not that calm. Crime has risen,” said Yulisa Duran, an 18-year-old nursing student sitting with her boyfriend in Morelia’s main square. His visit closes with a large outdoor Mass, to be simulcast live on giant screens on the other side of the Rio Grande at the Sun Bowl, where U.S. officials planned for at least 30,000 people.
As Francis entered the final stretch of his five-day trip to Mexico, his motivations for coming became clear. For starters, it’s likely the trip might not have taken place at all, at least now, had Francis not needed to be in the region for his historic encounter Friday with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, a meeting months’ in the making. Migration is a theme close to the pontiff’s heart. He has demanded that countries welcome those fleeing poverty and oppression and denounced what he calls the “globalization of indifference” toward migrants.
It’s also clear that Francis has some serious issues with the Mexican church hierarchy, which, for its part, also has some issues with him. In coming to Mexico, the pope did it on his own terms: Praying at the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe and visiting the most impoverished and crime-ridden areas, rewarding “his” bishops with his presence and sending a message to others with carefully chosen words and deeds. It’s a message that hasn’t gone down well with some in the U.S., at a time when border apprehensions of families and unaccompanied minors rose significantly in the last three months of 2015.
He scolded church leaders for being too tied to their own privilege and power while staying quiet as their people suffer. He urged seminarians to be pastors of God and not “clerics of the state.” He prayed at the tomb of Samuel Ruiz, a bishop who was a thorn in the side of the Mexican hierarchy for his defense of the indigenous. Republican presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz have vowed to expel all the estimated 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally and build a wall along the entire border from Texas to California.
What Francis didn’t do is also significant: He did not hold any public event in Mexico City, domain of the conservative Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, and cancelled a scheduled cultural encounter. It seems the frosty sentiment is mutual: When he came to the historic center for his meeting with the Mexican president and bishops, the central Zocalo square was oddly empty. On the eve of Francis’ trip, Trump criticized the pope’s border stop.
Francis wraps up his five-day visit on Wednesday by traveling to Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, for a cross-border Mass expected to focus heavily on the plight of migrants. “I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico,” Trump said in an interview with Fox. “I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is. They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.”
Late Tuesday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope is concerned about the plight of migrants everywhere, not just in the United States.
“The pope always talks about migration problems all around the world, of the duties we have to solve these problems in a humane manner, of hosting those who come from other countries in search of a life of dignity and peace,” Lombardi said.
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Associated Press writer Jacobo Garcia reported this story in Morelia and AP writer Nicole Winfield reported from Mexico City. AP writers Peter Orsi and Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report. Associated Press writers Christopher Sherman in Ciudad Juarez and Astrid Galvan in El Paso, Texas, contributed to this report.
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Nicole Winfield on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nwinfieldNicole Winfield on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nwinfield
Peter Orsi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.