(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Monday celebrated Mass for the largely indigenous population of the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico, saying today’s world needs their ancient values and traditions.
The outdoor Mass, celebrated at a sports stadium in the town of San Cristobal de Las Casas, included prayers and readings in several of the local languages. Despite being rich in natural resources, the southern region remains significantly less developed than the rest of the country, with high levels of poverty and illiteracy.
In his homily, the Pope noted that “in a systematic and organized way” the indigenous cultures have been misunderstood and excluded from society. “Some have considered your values, culture and traditions to be inferior”, Pope Francis said, while others, “intoxicated by power, money and market trends, have stolen your lands or contaminated them”. He stressed that it would be worthwhile for each person “to examine our conscience and learn to say, “Forgive me!”
In particular Pope Francis said indigenous peoples have much to teach the rest of the world about “how to interact harmoniously with nature, which they respect as a “source of food, a common home and an altar of human sharing”.
Please find below the full text of the Pope’s homily during Mass at the Municipal Sport Centre in San Cristóbal de las Casas
‘Li smantal Kajvaltike toj lek’ – The law of the Lord is perfect; it revives the soul. Thus begins the psalm we have just heard. The law of the Lord is perfect and the psalmist diligently lists everything that the law offers to those who hear and follow it: it revives the soul, it gives wisdom to the simple, it gladdens the heart, and it gives light to the eyes.
This is the law which the people of Israel received from the hand of Moses, a law that would help the People of God to live in the freedom to which they were called. A law intended to be a light for the journey and to accompany the pilgrimage of his people. A people who experienced slavery and the Pharaoh’s tyranny, who endured suffering and oppression to the point where God said, “Enough! No more! I have seen their affliction, I have heard their cry, I know their sufferings” (cf. Ex 3:9). And here the true face of God is seen, the face of the Father who suffers as he sees the pain, mistreatment, and lack of justice for his children. His word, his law, thus becomes a symbol of freedom, a symbol of happiness, wisdom and light. It is an experience, a reality which is conveyed by a phrase prayed in ‘Popol Vuh’ and born of the wisdom accumulated in these lands since time immemorial: “The dawn rises on all of the tribes together. The face of the earth was immediately healed by the sun” (33). The sun rose for the people who at various times have walked in the midst of history’s darkest moments.
In this expression, one hears the yearning to live in freedom, there is a longing which contemplates a promised land where oppression, mistreatment and humiliation are not the currency of the day. In the heart of man and in the memory of many of our peoples is imprinted this yearning for a land, for a time when human corruption will be overcome by fraternity, when injustice will be conquered by solidarity and when violence will be silenced by peace.
Our Father not only shares this longing, but has himself inspired it and continues to do so in giving us his son Jesus Christ. In him we discover the solidarity of the Father who walks by our side. In him, we see how the perfect law takes flesh, takes a human face, shares our history so as to walk with and sustain his people. He becomes the Way, he becomes the Truth, he becomes the Life, so that darkness may not have the last word and the dawn may not cease to rise on the lives of his sons and daughters.
In many ways there have been attempts to silence and dull this yearning, and in many ways there have been efforts to anaesthetize our soul, and in many ways there have been endeavours to subdue and lull our children and young people into a kind of lassitude by suggesting that nothing can change, that their dreams can never come true. Faced with these attempts, creation itself also raises an objection: “This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she ‘groans in travail’ (Rom 8:22)” (Laudato Si’, 2). The environmental challenge that we are experiencing and its human causes, affects us all (cf. Laudato Si’, 14) and demands our response. We can no longer remain silent before one of the greatest environmental crises in world history.
In this regard, you have much to teach us. Your peoples, as the bishops of Latin America have recognized, know how to interact harmoniously with nature, which they respect as a “source of food, a common home and an altar of human sharing” (Aparecida, 472).
And yet, on many occasions, in a systematic and organized way, your people have been misunderstood and excluded from society. Some have considered your values, culture and traditions to be inferior. Others, intoxicated by power, money and market trends, have stolen your lands or contaminated them. How sad this is! How worthwhile it would be for each of us to examine our conscience and learn to say, “Forgive me!” Today’s world, ravaged as it is by a throwaway culture, needs you!
Exposed to a culture that seeks to suppress all cultural heritage and features in pursuit of a homogenized world, the youth of today need to cling to the wisdom of their elders!
Today’s world, overcome by convenience, needs to learn anew the value of gratitude!
We rejoice in the certainty that “The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us” (Laudato Si’, 13). We rejoice that Jesus continues to die and rise again in each gesture that we offer to the least of our brothers and sisters. Let us be resolved to be witnesses to his Passion and his Resurrection, by giving flesh to these words: Li smantal Kajvaltike toj lek – the law of the Lord is perfect and comforts the soul.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis arrived in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico on Monday, just before 09.00 local time (16.00 Rome time).
His Holiness was welcomed by the Archbishop of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Fabio Martínez Castilla at Ángel Albino Crozo Airport. Representatives from the indigenous population presented the Pope with a crown of flowers and a group of children played marimbas as he made his way across the tarmac.
However, the Holy Father did not stay long. He boarded a helicopter that will take him to the municipal sports centre 50km away, in the town of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. He will then celebrate Holy Mass at 10.15 local time(17.15 Rome time) with the indigenous people of the Mexican State of Chiapas. The Mass will be celebrated in Spanish, with some parts celebrated in three of the native languages.
You can watch the Mass, streamed LIVE on the Vatican’s YouTube channel, here .
(from Vatican Radio)…
The Pope’s long silent prayer before the
unique and greatly venerated image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, was
inspiring. The important moment was hoped for, asked for, announced and then
emphasized by Pope Bergoglio in his addresses and homilies in Mexico City,
beginning with his speech to authorities in the National Palace, the symbolic
seat of political power that for the first time opened its doors to a Pontiff. Francis
is the third Pope to visit the great North American country, and at the
beginning of the meeting with bishops in the Cathedral, he asked how “could the
Successor of Peter, called from faraway Latin America” not “rest his gaze on la
Morenita [dark-skinned] Virgin”? Likewise, how could he not want Mary’s
maternal gaze upon him? The
very gaze of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where “the secret heart of each Mexican” is
found, was chosen by the Pontiff as the common thread for the long and
challenging reflection that characterized his meeting with the country’s
bishops. In his international journeys, Pope Francis has always reserved ample
and significant space for this moment, which achieves Catholic communion and
true pastoral sharing. It was the same this time too. The
central image of the Pope’s address to the Mexican episcopate was therefore
that of the gaze: both of la Morenita , and also of those who
contemplate her and in their turn have the responsibility to look to others, to
offer them the womb of Christian faith and to reflect the tenderness of God.
Bishops need to give this particular attention to young people, the Pontiff
said. Above all, and with powerful expressions, he called them to courageously
confront the demoralizing phenomena of drug trafficking which, he said,
“devours like a metastasis”. Indeed,
bishops must look to the example of God’s “gracious humility and his bowing
down to help us”, culminated in the Incarnation. Francis emphasized this
concept, repeating the term the Greek Fathers used to define it: synkatàbasis .
For this reason, the Mexican episcopate, standing “on the shoulders of giants”
— namely, predecessors in the faith who allow us to see far into the distance —
must draw from the source of riches that
is their past. And do so with the certainty shown by the Pope, that in time
Mexico and its Church will arrive at its meeting with history and with God. The
same encouragement expressed to Mexican Catholics by Paul VI was quoted by his Successor, Francis, at the end of the Mass in
Ecatepec. Precisely out of love for Christ, the Virgin loved her neighbour,
“which must be the rule governing all human relations”, Pope Montini recalled.
He added that one must see “in every man a brother and, in every brother
Christ, in order that love for God and for mankind be joined as one living and
operative love, the only thing that can remedy the miseries of the world and
renew it at its deepest root: the heart of man”. g.m.v….
“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….
We do not need ‘princes’, but rather a community of the Lord’s witnesses.” Pope
Francis addressed a long and passionate speech to the bishops of Mexico on
Saturday morning, 13 February, in the Cathedral of the Assumption in Mexico
City. It was an address in which the Pontiff touched on the serious challenges
which the country is facing, including migration and crime. Expressing his
trust in the ability of the country and of the Church to walk on the path of
peace and justice, the Pope said that he “is sure that Mexico and its Church”,
he said, “will make it in time to that rendezvous with themselves, with history
and with God”. The Pope’s address to the bishops…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Sunday made his way through one of Mexico City’s most lawless neighborhoods, Ecatepec, to celebrate Mass for a massive crowd of faithful. Fr. Federico Lombardi, Director of the Holy See Press Office, spoke to Veronica Scarisbrick about the exuberant welcome received by the Pope from the Mexican people. Listen to their full conversation:
Pope Francis, Fr. Lombardi said, has said his main sentiment regarding his welcome in Mexico is gratitude. “He feels that these people who come in the street to show him love, joy for his coming, desire of blessing is something that expresses a love that is without interest, without looking for something material. In this sense, his experience of meeting the people is meeting them in a spiritual way, a joyful way.” Messenger of mercy and peace He said the key to the Holy Father’s Apostolic Journey to Mexico is his coming as a messenger of mercy and peace . The people “understand the presence of someone that is giving to them mercy, love and hope to progress toward peace, if they have a Christian attitude, responsibility, and solidarity for others, as the Pope says the Gospel requires.” The Pope has drawn massive crowds to his events, and Fr. Lombardi said, “This movement of this many, many hundreds of thousands of people on the street … I think is giving off its fruits in the sense which the Pope hopes: a growth in hope, in mercy, and solidarity.” He said Pope Francis’ prayer before the Virgin of Guadalupe on Saturday is “always the atmosphere in which the Pope encounters the people of Mexico, and he asked the Mother of God to bless this people and to help this people to have hope [for] a better future. The problems are very hard, but the Pope encourages them not to be desperate, to try to build a world in which mutual understanding, solidarity, can really confront the situation.” Sunday Mass in Ecatepec Speaking about the Holy Father’s Mass in Ecatepec on Sunday, Fr. Lombardi said, “The people were listening to the Pope very willingly, they had waited for the Pope in a very cool night and morning, but they were very happy to meet the Pope. I think this Mass has been the most massive Mass that we have experienced. In this anonymous and terrific town, the message of love, of solidarity, of being together in love and hope is something very fundamental. We can see how the message of the gospel is needed to be human in this world.” Pope Francis at the end of the Mass told the people to not dialogue with the devil . Fr. Lombardi said his was a very traditional message, which “sometimes seems to be too simple, but in reality it [hits at] the profound roots of the problem. Without a conversion in the heart of everyone and also in society, we will not confront the problem of violence, the problem of disparity, and the unjust distribution of wealth. The origins of the problem are exactly in the temptations of Christ.” (from Vatican Radio)…