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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has decried the grave injustices perpetrated against the thousands of migrants fleeing poverty and violence and condemned the trafficking of human beings.

Celebrating Mass in Ciudad Juárez, the last public event of his Mexican visit, the Pope spoke of the global phenomenon of forced migration.

“Here in Ciudad Juárez, as in other border areas - he said - there are thousands of immigrants from Central America and other countries, not forgetting the many Mexicans who also seek to pass over “to the other side”.  Each step, a journey laden with grave injustices: the enslaved, the imprisoned and extorted; so many of these brothers and sisters of ours are the consequence of a trade in human beings”.

The Pope’s homily came during a Mass in the Fair area of Juárez City filled with over 200,000 faithful.

He was also reaching out to the more than 30,000 faithful participating in the event thanks to a livestream of the ceremony being broadcast in a football stadium just across the border in the West Texas city of El Paso.

Please find below the translation of Pope Francis’ homily for the Mass at the Ciudad Juárez Fair Grounds:

   In the second century Saint Irenaeus wrote that the glory of God is the life of man.  It is an expression which continues to echo in the heart of the Church.  The glory of the Father is the life of his sons and daughters.  There is no greater glory for a father than to see his children blossom, no greater satisfaction than to see his children grow up, developing and flourishing.  The first reading that we have just heard points to this.  The great city of Nineveh, was self-destructing as a result of oppression and dishonour, violence and injustice.  The grand capital’s days were numbered because the violence within it could not continue.  Then the Lord appeared and stirred Jonah’s heart: the Father called and sent forth his messenger.  Jonah was summoned to receive a mission.  “Go”, he is told, because in “forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jon 3:4).  Go and help them to understand that by the way they treat each other, ordering and organizing themselves, they are only creating death and destruction, suffering and oppression.  Make them see this is no way to live, neither for the king nor his subjects, nor for farm fields nor for the cattle.  Go and tell them that they have become used to this degrading way of life and have lost their sensitivity to pain.  Go and tell them that injustice has infected their way of seeing the world.  “Therefore, go Jonah!”.  God sent him to testify to what was happening, he sent him to wake up a people intoxicated with themselves.
    
   In this text we find ourselves before the mystery of divine mercy.  Mercy, which always rejects wickedness, takes the human person in great earnest.  Mercy always appeals to the latent and numbed goodness within each person.  Far from bringing destruction, as we so often desire or want to bring about ourselves, mercy seeks to transform each situation from within.  Herein lies the mystery of divine mercy.  It seeks and invites us to conversion, it invites us to repentance; it invites us to see the damage being done at every level.  Mercy always pierces evil in order to transform it.
    
   The king listened to Jonah, the inhabitants of the city responded and penance was decreed.  God’s mercy has entered the heart, revealing and showing wherein our certainty and hope lie: there is always the possibility of change, we still have time to transform what is destroying us as a people, what is demeaning our humanity.  Mercy encourages us to look to the present, and to trust what is healthy and good beating in every heart.  God’s mercy is our shield and our strength.

   Jonah helped them to see, helped them to become aware.  Following this, his call found men and women capable of repenting, and capable of weeping.  To weep over injustice, to cry over corruption, to cry over oppression.  These are tears that lead to transformation, that soften the heart; they are the tears that purify our gaze and enable us to see the cycle of sin into which very often we have sunk.  They are tears that can sensitize our gaze and our attitude hardened and especially dormant in the face of another’s suffering.  They are the tears that can break us, capable of opening us to conversion.
    
   This word echoes forcefully today among us; this word is the voice crying out in the wilderness, inviting us to conversion.  In this Year of Mercy, with you here, I beg for God’s mercy; with you I wish to plead for the gift of tears, the gift of conversion.

   Here in Ciudad Juárez, as in other border areas, there are thousands of immigrants from Central America and other countries, not forgetting the many Mexicans who also seek to pass over “to the other side”.  Each step, a journey laden with grave injustices: the enslaved, the imprisoned and extorted; so many of these brothers and sisters of ours are the consequence of a trade in human beings.
    
   We cannot deny the humanitarian crisis which in recent years has meant migration for thousands of people, whether by train or highway or on foot, crossing hundreds of kilometres through mountains, deserts and inhospitable zones.  The human tragedy that is forced migration is a global phenomenon today.  This crisis which can be measured in numbers and statistics, we want instead to measure with names, stories, families.  They are the brothers and sisters of those expelled by poverty and violence, by drug trafficking and criminal organizations.  Being faced with so many legal vacuums, they get caught up in a web that ensnares and always destroys the poorest.  Not only do they suffer poverty but they must also endure these forms of violence.  Injustice is radicalized in the young; they are “cannon fodder”, persecuted and threatened when they try to flee the spiral of violence and the hell of drugs, not to mention the tragic predicament of the many women whose lives have been unjustly taken.

   Let us together ask our God for the gift of conversion, the gift of tears, let us ask him to give us open hearts like the Ninevites, open to his call heard in the suffering faces of countless men and women.  No more death!  No more exploitation!  There is still time to change, there is still a way out and a chance, time to implore the mercy of God.
    
   Just as in Jonas’ time, so too today may we commit ourselves to conversion; may we be signs lighting the way and announcing salvation.  I know of the work of countless civil organizations working to support the rights of migrants.  I know too of the committed work of so many men and women religious, priests and lay people in accompanying migrants and in defending life.  They are on the front lines, often risking their own lives.  By their very lives they are prophets of mercy; they are the beating heart and the accompanying feet of the Church that opens its arms and sustains.
    
   This time for conversion, this time for salvation, is the time for mercy.  And so, let us say together in response to the suffering on so many faces: In your compassion and mercy, Lord, have pity on us … cleanse us from our sins and create in us a pure heart, a new spirit (cf. Ps 50).

   I would like to take this occasion to send greeting from here to our dear sisters and brothers who are with us now, beyond the border, in particular those who are gathered in the University of El Paso Stadium; it’s known as the Sun Bowl, and they are led by monsignor Mark Seitz. With the help of technology, we can pray, sing and together celebrate the merciful love that the Lord gives us and that no border can stop us from sharing. Thank you brothers and sisters at El Paso of making us feel like one family and one, same, Christian community.     

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has thanked the people of Mexico for having made possible his apostolic visit.

At a brief farewell ceremony at the fairgrounds in Juárez City where he had just celebrated Holy Mass, and before travelling to the International Airport at the conclusion of his six-day journey, the Pope thanked the great Mexican family for having opened the doors of their lives and of their nation.

He also quoted the Mexican writer, Octavio Paz, and entrusted the Mexican people to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Please find below the translation of the full text of the Pope’s farewell greeting:  

Dear Bishop José Guadalupe Torres Campos of Juárez City, 
Dear Brothers in the Episcopate, 
Your Excellencies, 
Dear friends, 

Thank you very much, Your Excellency, for your kind words of farewell.  Now is the moment to give thanks to Our Lord for having granted me this visit to Mexico. 

I do not want to leave without giving thanks for the efforts of all who made this pilgrimage possible.  I thank all the state and local authorities for your attention and solicitous assistance that have contributed to the smooth running of this pastoral visit just as I also thank wholeheartedly those who have offered their contribution in different ways.  To all those anonymous helpers who quietly gave of their very best to make these days a great family celebration: thank you.  I have felt welcomed and warmly received by the love, the celebration, the hope of this great Mexican family: thank you for having opened the doors of your lives to me, the doors of your nation. 

The Mexican writer Octavio Paz says in his poem Hermandad: 

“I am a man: I only last a brief while, and the night is vast. 
But I look up: the stars are writing. 
Without grasping I understand: I am also the writing
and in this very instant someone is spelling me out”

(Un sol más vivo. Antología poética, Ed. Era, México 2014, 268).

Taking up these beautiful words, I dare to suggest that the one who spells us out and marks out the road for us is the mysterious but real presence of God in the real flesh of all people, especially the poorest and most needy of Mexico. 

The night can seem vast and very dark, but in these days I have been able to observe that in this people there are many lights who proclaim hope; I have been able to see in many of their testimonies, in many of their faces, the presence of God who carries on walking in this land, guiding you, sustaining hope; many men and women, with their everyday efforts, make it possible for this Mexican society not to be left in darkness.  They are tomorrow’s prophets, they are the sign of a new dawn. 

May Mary, Mother of Guadalupe, continue to visit you, continue to walk on your lands, helping you to be missionaries and witnesses of mercy and reconciliation. 

Once again, thank you very much. 

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Juarez, Mexico, Feb 17, 2016 / 03:29 pm (CNA).- Speaking to laborers in the Mexican City of Juarez on Wednesday, Pope Francis laid out several key areas of focus in fighting what he called “the cycle of drug trafficking and violence.”

“One of the greatest scourges for young people is the lack of opportunities for study and for sustainable and profitable work, which would permit them to work for the future,” the Pope said Feb. 17.  

He said that this lack of opportunity frequently leads to situations of poverty, which then becomes “the best breeding ground for the young to fall into the cycle of drug trafficking and violence.”

This, the Pope said, “is a luxury which no one can afford; we cannot allow the present and future of Mexico to be alone and abandoned.”

Pope Francis met with members of Mexico’s workforce Feb. 17 in Ciudad Juarez on his last day in the country. Juarez borders the U.S. city of El Paso, Texas, and is a major destination for thousands of immigrants from Mexico and Central America who want to enter the United States.

The Pope’s visit to Juarez is the last in a series of daytrips he has made to some of the poorest and most violent areas of the country, including the state of Chiapas and the city of Morelia in Mexico’s Michoacán state.

His final stop in Juarez has special meaning not only because of the border Mass he will celebrate later in the afternoon, but also because of the sharp distinction between the economic state of the two countries on each side of the border.

Before speaking to the workers, Pope Francis listened to the testimonies of both a married couple who work, and high-level businessman.

Daisy Flores Gamez and her husband Jesus Varela Arturo Gurrola expressed their concern that economic problems are making it increasingly more difficult to balance family life and true care for one's children. They also said that, in their opinion, the decline and conflict of values is due to the absence of parents in the home.

The Pope also heard from Juan Pablo Castanon, national president of the Business Coordinating Council, who shared his concerns on problems related to poverty and unemployment, and stressed the importance of developing technology, but not allowing it to take the place of people.

In his speech to the workers, Pope Francis said that “more needs to be done” in fostering a culture of dialogue, encounter and inclusion.

“Unfortunately, the times we live in have imposed the paradigm of economic utility as the starting point for personal relationships,” he said, noting that the current mentality pushes for “the greatest possible profits, immediately and at any cost.”

This mentality not only destroys the ethical dimension of business, but also ignores the fact that the best investment to be made is in people – both as individuals and as families, he said.

When the flow of people is put “at the service of the flow of capital,” the result is the exploitation of employees “as if they were objects to be used and discarded,” Francis said, quoting his environmental encyclical, Laudato Si.

God, he added, “will hold us accountable for the slaves of our day, and we must do everything to make sure that these situations do not happen again.”

Francis noted that some people object to the social doctrine of the Church, saying it reduces business to mere charity organizations or “philanthropic institutions.”

However, he stressed, the “only aspiration of the Church’s Social Doctrine is to guard over the integrity of people and social structures.”

“Every time that, for whatever reason, this integrity is threatened or reduced to a consumer good, the Church’s Social Doctrine will be a prophetic voice to protect us all from being lost in the seductive sea of ambition,” he said.

Pope Francis warned that each time a person’s integrity is violated, it begins a process of declination for society as a whole. Therefore, every sector of society is obliged look out for the good of everyone.

“We are all in the same boat. We all have to struggle to make sure that work is a humanizing moment which looks to the future,” he said, and asked those present what kind of world and what kind of Mexico they want to leave for their children.

“Do you want to leave them the memory of exploitation, of insufficient pay, of workplace harassment? Or do you want to leave them a culture which recalls dignified work, a proper roof, and land to be worked?”

He also asked whether they would leave behind air “tainted by corruption, violence, insecurity and suspicion, or, on the contrary, an air capable of generating alternatives, renewal and change?”

Francis acknowledged that the issues he raised are not easy to face, but said that leaving the future in the hands of corruption, brutality and inequity would be worse.

Even though it’s difficult to bring different sides together to negotiate, more harm is done by refusing to negotiate, the Pope said. He added that while getting along can be hard in an increasingly competitive world, it would be worse if society allows this competition to destroy people.

“Profit and capital are not a good over and above the human person; they are at the service of the common good,” he said. When the common good is used only to serve profit and capital, “the only thing gained is known as exclusion.”

Francis closed his speech by inviting the citizens of Mexico to build a country “that your children deserve; a Mexico where no one is first, second or fourth; a Mexico where each sees in the other the dignity of a child of God.”

 

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Juarez, Mexico, Feb 17, 2016 / 03:45 pm (CNA).- UPDATE: 7:30pm EST - Read the full text of Pope Francis final homily in Mexico from the Feb. 17 Mass at the Ciudad Juárez fairgrounds.

In the second century Saint Irenaeus wrote that the glory of God is the life of man. It is an expression which continues to echo in the heart of the Church. The glory of the Father is the life of his sons and daughters. There is no greater glory for a father than to see his children blossom, no greater satisfaction than to see his children grow up, developing and flourishing. The first reading that we have just heard points to this. The great city of Nineveh, was self-destructing as a result of oppression and dishonour, violence and injustice. The grand capital’s days were numbered because the violence within it could not continue. Then the Lord appeared and stirred Jonah’s heart: the Father called and sent forth his messenger. Jonah was summoned to receive a mission. “Go”, he is told, because in “forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jon 3:4). Go and help them to understand that by the way they treat each other, ordering and organizing themselves, they are only creating death and destruction, suffering and oppression. Make them see this is no way to live, neither for the king nor his subjects, nor for farm fields nor for the cattle. Go and tell them that they have become used to this degrading way of life and have lost their sensitivity to pain. Go and tell them that injustice has infected their way of seeing the world. “Therefore, go Jonah!”. God sent him to testify to what was happening, he sent him to wake up a people intoxicated with themselves.

In this text we find ourselves before the mystery of divine mercy. Mercy, which always rejects wickedness, takes the human person in great earnest. Mercy always appeals to the latent and numbed goodness within each person. Far from bringing destruction, as we so often desire or want to bring about ourselves, mercy seeks to transform each situation from within. Herein lies the mystery of divine mercy. It seeks and invites us to conversion, it invites us to repentance; it invites us to see the damage being done at every level. Mercy always pierces evil in order to transform it.

The king listened to Jonah, the inhabitants of the city responded and penance was decreed. God’s mercy has entered the heart, revealing and showing wherein our certainty and hope lie: there is always the possibility of change, we still have time to transform what is destroying us as a people, what is demeaning our humanity. Mercy encourages us to look to the present, and to trust what is healthy and good beating in every heart. God’s mercy is our shield and our strength.

Jonah helped them to see, helped them to become aware. Following this, his call found men and women capable of repenting, and capable of weeping. To weep over injustice, to cry over corruption, to cry over oppression. These are tears that lead to transformation, that soften the heart; they are the tears that purify our gaze and enable us to see the cycle of sin into which very often we have sunk. They are tears that can sensitize our gaze and our attitude hardened and especially dormant in the face of another’s suffering. They are the tears that can break us, capable of opening us to conversion.

This word echoes forcefully today among us; this word is the voice crying out in the wilderness, inviting us to conversion. In this Year of Mercy, with you here, I beg for God’s mercy; with you I wish to plead for the gift of tears, the gift of conversion.

Here in Ciudad Juárez, as in other border areas, there are thousands of immigrants from Central America and other countries, not forgetting the many Mexicans who also seek to pass over “to the other side”. Each step, a journey laden with grave injustices: the enslaved, the imprisoned and extorted; so many of these brothers and sisters of ours are the consequence of a trade in human beings.

We cannot deny the humanitarian crisis which in recent years has meant the migration of thousands of people, whether by train or highway or on foot, crossing hundreds of kilometres through mountains, deserts and inhospitable zones. The human tragedy that is forced migration is a global phenomenon today. This crisis, which can be measured in numbers and statistics, we want instead to measure with names, stories, families. They are the brothers and sisters of those excluded as a result of poverty and violence, drug trafficking and criminal organizations. Being faced with so many legal vacuums, they get caught up in a web that ensnares and always destroys the poorest. Not only do they suffer poverty but they must also endure these forms of violence. Injustice is radicalized in the young; they are “cannon fodder”, persecuted and threatened when they try to flee the spiral of violence and the hell of drugs. Then there are the many women unjustly robbed of their lives.

Let us together ask our God for the gift of conversion, the gift of tears, let us ask him to give us open hearts like the Ninevites, open to his call heard in the suffering faces of countless men and women. No more death! No more exploitation! There is still time to change, there is still a way out and a chance, time to implore the mercy of God.

Just as in Jonas’ time, so too today may we commit ourselves to conversion; may we be signs lighting the way and announcing salvation. I know of the work of countless civil organizations working to support the rights of migrants. I know too of the committed work of so many men and women religious, priests and lay people in accompanying migrants and in defending life. They are on the front lines, often risking their own lives. By their very lives they are prophets of mercy; they are the beating heart and the accompanying feet of the Church that opens its arms and sustains.

This time for conversion, this time for salvation, is the time for mercy. And so, let us say together in response to the suffering on so many faces: In your compassion and mercy, Lord, have pity on us ... cleanse us from our sins and create in us a pure heart, a new spirit (cf. Ps 50).

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Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Feb 17, 2016 / 04:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At the Mexico-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, Pope Francis told hundreds of thousands of people present to beg God for the “gift of tears” over the suffering of others, especially forced migration.

“Let us together ask our God for the gift of conversion, the gift of tears, let us ask him to give us open hearts,” he said during the Feb. 17 Mass at Benito Juárez stadium.

“No more death! No more exploitation!”

Pope Francis drew on the day's reading from Jonah in which God calls upon the prophet to go and convert the Ninevites, whose city was “self-destructing as a result of oppression and dishonor, violence and injustice.”

“God sent him to testify to what was happening, he sent him to wake up a people intoxicated with themselves,” he said.

Jonah's message to the Ninevites and God's divine mercy saved the people from self-destruction, proving that “there is always the possibility of change, we still have time to transform what is destroying us as a people, what is demeaning our humanity.”

This account presents us with the very mystery of divine mercy, the pontiff said.

“Mercy always appeals to the latent and numbed goodness within each person…It seeks and invites us to conversion, it invites us to repentance; it invites us to see the damage being done at every level. Mercy always pierces evil in order to transform it,” he said.

Pope Francis traveled to Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city which borders El Paso, Texas, to celebrate Mass during the final day of his Feb. 12-17 visit to Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the Mass, which included faithful on both sides of the border.



At this place, along with many other border cities between the neighboring countries where thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans try to enter the United States, the story of the Ninevites' conversion “echoes forcefully among us today” and invites us to conversion, Pope Francis said.

“In this Year of Mercy, with you here, I beg for God's mercy; with you I wish to plead for the gift of tears, the gift of conversion,” he said.

“To weep over injustice, to cry over corruption, to cry over oppression,” the Pope said. “They are tears that can sensitize our gaze and our attitude hardened and especially dormant in the face of another's suffering. They are the tears that can break us, capable of opening us to conversion.”

So often the humanitarian crisis of forced migration is measured with numbers and statistics, but in order to open our hearts to conversion, the Holy Father said, “we want to instead measure with names, stories, families.”

This journey, filled with “legal vacuums,” always “ensnares” and “destroys the poorest.”

The young are especially vulnerable in the flight of forced migration, he said calling them “cannon fodder” who are “persecuted and threatened when they try to flee the spiral of violence and the hell of drugs.”

He praised civil and religious organizations dedicated to “accompanying migrants” and “defending life” calling them “signs lighting the way and announcing salvation” just as Jonah did.
                    
“By their very lives they are prophets of mercy; they are the beating heart and the accompanying feet of the Church that opens its arms and sustains,” Pope Francis said.

He closed urging those present to ask for God’s mercy and grace, saying that it’s not too late for conversion.

“This time for conversion, this time for salvation, is the time for mercy,” he said. “And so, let us say together in response to the suffering on so many faces: In your compassion and mercy, Lord, have pity on us ... cleanse us from our sins and create in us a pure heart, a new spirit.”

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Cindy Wooden

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (CNS) -- God will hold humanity responsible for enslaving the poor and treating people as less important than profits, Pope Francis told Mexican workers and business leaders.

"What kind of world do we want to leave our children?" the pope asked Feb. 17 during a meeting in Ciudad Juarez with 3,000 people representing the "world of work" in a border town known for its factories -- maquiladoras -- offering low-wage jobs. Mexico's minimum wage is the equivalent of about $4 a day.

"God will hold today's slavers accountable, and we must do everything to make sure that these situations do not happen again," the pope said. "The flow of capital cannot determine the flow and the life of people."

Daisy Flores Gamez, her husband Jesus Gurrola Varela and two children welcomed the pope; Flores told him the financial struggles caused by the low wages are obvious, but families also are being tested and even destroyed by the long hours workers are expected to put in to earn a pittance.

"We believe the decadence and conflict of values in our society come, in part, from an absence of parents in the home," she said, pleading with the pope to intercede for them with governments and businesses to institute eight-hour workdays.

Juan Pablo Castanon, president of a national business leaders' organization, told the pope that half of all Mexicans are poor and six out of 10 workers have no insurance or social security. "With great concern, we see that our efforts over the last decades to overcome poverty have not worked completely."

He thanked the pope for his visit, assuring him that the business leaders present are committed to a vision of human development that aims at "the sustainability of businesses and sources of jobs," as well as at promoting a "social dialogue" that will help the whole nation move forward.

Ciudad Juarez, lying on the U.S.-Mexican border, also hosts thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans hoping to cross over into the United States or who already made the crossing, but did so illegally and were sent back to the Mexican side of the border.

The city is infamous as a center of narcotrafficking, is plagued by "pandillas" or armed gangs and, since the early 1990s, has grabbed headlines around the world because of the alarming number of area women who disappeared or were murdered.

Pope Francis told the workers and business leaders that things cannot continue as they have been going and that dialogue and respect for human dignity are the only paths to a better future.

Straying from his prepared text, the pope told those present that he once knew a businessman who would go into negotiations saying, "'I know I'm going to lose something so that we can all win.' That man's philosophy is so beautiful. When you negotiate, you will always lose something, but everyone wins."

Business owners, just like the workers, have a stake in improving the situation for individuals and for the nation, the pope said. "We do not have the luxury of missing any chance to encounter, discuss, confront or search" for solutions that will provide opportunity while treating human beings with the respect they deserve.

"Anything we can do to foster dialogue, encounter and the search for better alternatives and opportunities is already an accomplishment to be valued and highlighted," the pope told them.

Looking for common ground, Pope Francis asked the workers and the business people to think about the future they hope for their children and their country. Almost all people would share the same general dream, he said, and they must work together to achieve it.

Responding to Flores' plea for family-friendly work schedules, the pope told the crowd: "I invite you to dream, to dream of a Mexico where the father has time to play with his children, where a mother has time to play with her children. And you will gain that through dialogue, through negotiating, by losing so that everyone wins."

"What kind of Mexico do you want to leave your children? Do you want to leave them the memory of exploitation, of insufficient pay, of workplace harassment?" he asked. Or, should the future be one of "dignified work, a proper roof (over one's head) and of land to be worked?"

The pope continued by asking what air they hope their children will breathe: "an air tainted by corruption, violence, insecurity and suspicion or, on the contrary, an air capable of generating alternatives, renewal and change?"

The interconnections of economic activity, employment and the political and social realities of Mexico are complicated, the pope acknowledged, "but it is worse to leave the future in the hands of corruption, brutality and the lack of equality."

In a town tense for months with workers demonstrating for tiny wage increases and a right to unionize, Pope Francis said he knows it is not easy to negotiate peacefully "in an increasingly competitive world, but it is worse to allow the competitive world to determine the destiny of the people."

Profit and capital, he said, must not be given more importance than people; rather they must be assets placed at the service of the common good.

"When the common good is used only in the service of profit and capital," he said, "the only thing gained is known as exclusion."

Meeting the workers and business owners on the last day of his six-day visit to Mexico, Pope Francis urged them "to dream of Mexico, to build the Mexico that your children deserve; a Mexico where no one is first, second or fourth; a Mexico where each sees in the other the dignity of a child of God."

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Contributing to this story was Junno Arocho Esteves in Mexico City.

Follow Wooden on Twitter: @Cindy_Wooden

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Cindy Wooden

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (CNS) -- At the border of Mexico and the United States, Pope Francis blessed a large cross in memory of all the people who have crossed the frontier.

The pope said nothing Feb. 17, but he clasped his hands tightly in prayer and bowed his head in silent prayer. He left a bunch of flowers on a table in front of the cross.

Then, to the great joy of people, including immigrants, gathered in El Paso, Texas, on the other side of the fence, the pope waved.

The whole thing lasted less than three minutes. But with hundreds of thousands of people waiting in a fairgrounds nearby for Mass, the pope was intent on taking the time to acknowledge the significance of the spot.

At the foot of the large cross were three small crosses, which the pope also blessed. They will go to the dioceses of El Paso, Ciudad Juarez and Las Cruces, New Mexico.

According to the Pew Research Center, there were 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2014 -- which makes about 3.5 percent of the nation's population. Mexicans make up about half of all unauthorized immigrants, the center said in a report in November, though their numbers have been declining in recent years. There were 5.6 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2014, down from 6.4 million in 2009, the Pew Research Center reported.

But it is not only Mexicans who are crossing the border. More and more of the immigrants apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol are from violence-torn Central American countries, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

According to figures released by the U.S. Border Control, 4,353 people have died trying to cross the border from 2005 to 2015.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, one of several U.S. bishops at the pope's Mass in Ciudad Juarez, said the pope's brief moment at the border memorial was "a great sign of hope for families separated and suffering."

With 20 years' experience ministering primarily to migrants, the cardinal said he can guarantee, "they bring an energy and a work ethic and a spirit of adventure that made America a great country."

Lily Limon, of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in El Paso, whose parents were immigrants from Mexico, put her hand over her heart as she saw the pope bless the border.

"To know that he was this close to us, and he took time to bless and look over to us, to the VIPs seated here, our immigrants, our young people that have crossed over undocumented, our migrant workers, this is just an incredible gesture and for us and unforgettable experience."

There were about 550 people seated on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande taking part in the Mass.

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Contributing to this story was Nancy Wiechec in El Paso.

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