Pope Francis’ long prayer before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe as a key to interpreting the Pope’s pilgrimage to the Central American country.
Looking at Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and letting her look at him. Bending down to the people whom the mestiza carries in her womb, caring about all of them but especially those who suffer in body and spirit, the victims of poverty and violence. Drawing from the Gospel the strength of prophesy so as to know what side to be on in the face of exploitation, drug trafficking, power dominance, indifference towards the plight of immigrants and a colonialism imposed by new family models. Pope Francis’ visit to Mexico was a crescendo that culminated in the moment of prayer in Ciudad Juarez, on a border so many dream of crossing, with many losing their lives there in the process.
At the heart of faith
Pope Francis had said that his visit to Mexico was above all an opportunity for him to pray before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, an image 20 million visitors come to see each year, the maternal home, the dwelling place, the “little home” of every Mexican. That is where Francis, the Catholic Church’s first ever Latin American Pope, wished to pause for a period of prayer, letting her gaze fall upon him, so that he could talk to her like a son to his mother. The image of the Pope in the camarin - the little room where visitors can contemplate up close the image that mysteriously formed on the humble tilma worn by the native Mexican, Juan Diego - is the image of a journey. Faith is communicated through the eyes, it is about seeing and touching. Mary’s gaze fell upon a Pope who recognises the unmistakeable smell of the holy people of God, right to its very core, and from that gaze, he draws the power of love which he feels for this suffering people. Wound that must be touched if one is to touch “the flesh of Christ”.
Bishop pastors, not officials or members of an élite
The speech to fellow bishops was perhaps the most heart-wrenching and personal speech of Francis’ visit. Inspired by the gaze of Our Lady of Guadalupe, mother of the Mexican people, he was able to invite the pastors of the Mexican Church to that “pastoral conversion” that lies at the heart of his pontificate. It is not agreements with powerful people, government backing or financial help from Catholic magnates that give the Church solidity. Neither is this guaranteed by “clubs” or cliques. “Observing your faces, the Mexican people have the right to witness the signs of those “who have seen the Lord” (cf. Jn 20:25), of those who have been with God. This is essential. Only a Church able to shelter the faces of men and women who knock on her doors will be able to speak to them of God. If we do not know how to decipher their sufferings, if we do not come to understand their needs, then we can offer them nothing. The richness we have flows only when we encounter the smallness of those who beg and this encounter occurs precisely in our hearts, the hearts of Pastors.”
The embrace with the Indios
The rest of the visit illustrated and confirmed these first two images. The beautiful day spent in Chiapas, San Cristóbal de las Casas and Tuxtla Gutierrez, testified Francis’ closeness to the indigenous peoples: not only did he apologise to them for all the hardship they suffered in the past and continue to suffer, he also emphasised the value of this cultures in a day and age when the earth is being savagely exploited and the elderly discarded. This is the supreme criterion of the ‘salus animarum’, the salvation of souls, which led the Pope to approve ordinations to the permanent diaconate in the diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas after a 14 year ban, as well as to authorise the use of missals in some of the major languajes. Our Lady of Guadalupe chose to reveal herself to a humble indigenous man, leaving him with the most venerated Marian image in the world.
Friends, not assassins
At Morelia’s stadium, Francis addressed young people, Mexico’s true wealth. He talked about friendship with Jesus, who “calls us friends” and “would never ask us to be assassins; would never send us out to death”. It is thanks to Him that we can “begin again and again, hand in hand with him we find the strength to say: it is a lie to believe that the only way to live, or to be young, is to entrust oneself to drug dealers or others who do nothing but sow destruction and death. Hand in hand with Jesus Christ we can say: it is a lie that the only way to live as young people here is in poverty and exclusion”.
Looking beyond the border
The Pope’s gaze beyond the US-Mexico border, was the last, intense gaze of his visit. The Pope does not play the politician, nor does he deal with immigration laws. In his eyes, the migration tragedy is not described in numbers, statistics, figures and expenses. The face of this tragedy are the stories of women, children, men and elderly people who experience it. Stories and lives that turn to smoke at the border, at so many borders. The image of the Pope on that raised platform surmounted by a black cross, just metres away from the Rio Bravo and the chain link fence that separates Ciudad Juarez from El Paso, one of the areas with the heaviest military presence in the world, represents a testimony and an appeal that refer not only to the flesh of migrants who fall victim to human traffickers in Mexico and the US and the bombastic proposals of White House candidate Donald Trump, who is suggesting a border wall with Mexico and the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants. The Pope’s testimony and appeal also apply to Europe which is facing a crisis in its founding values, ill as it is with self-referentiality, nationalism, leaders who are “all hat and no cattle” and a Christianity that has been turned into ideology by those who dream or have already set to building new walls, forgetting that the son of God was also a migrant refugee.
