Pope greets faithful on 1st full day in Mexico

He characterized the February 12 conversation as open and authentic.

He also told the bishops, “We do not need ‘princes, ‘ but rather a community of the Lord’s witnesses”.

“Since relations with the Vatican have improved, the government will maybe change its views and listen to the pope”, said Adan Gonzalez, 68, a retired industrial contractor who arrived at the Zocalo at 2:00 am to ensure he would be close enough to see Francis.

The pontiff is expected to bring a message of hope and solidarity to residents with a Mass featuring readings about not being tempted by the devil – a common exhortation from a pope who frequently invokes the threat of “the evil one”.

“I trust more in El Chapo than in the pope or the president”, said Mario Alberto, 27, a waiter in Mexico City.

The two religious leaders, guests of a communist government, are addressing ways of healing the rift between their churches as well as their concerns over the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. If you have to say things, say them, but do it like men: “to the face”, he said.

“In the near future, there can hardly be a resolution of the principal differences between the churches”, he said. “A people with a youthful population is a people able to renew and transform itself; it is an invitation to look to the future with hope and, in turn, it challenges us in a positive way here and now”. “We remain in God’s presence only when we are little ones, orphans and beggars”.

Their conversation also aimed to strengthen “the bases of personal and family morality” through “the participation of the Church in the life of modern human society, that glorifies the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

Speaking in formal remarks to Peña Nieto Saturday, Francis called Mexico a “great country” and said how excited he was to continue on with his travels through the week.

“We agreed that unity is created by journeying together”, he told a gathering of Catholic and Orthodox clergy and reporters after his meeting with the patriarch. I confess that I felt the consolation of the Spirit in this dialogue. We left with a series of initiatives that I believe are viable and can be done. In Juarez, he will also visit a prison.

“They may perhaps express the nostalgia of those who can not forget the Lord, but who have become, at any rate, mere babbling orphans beside a tomb”, he continued later. Eastern Orthodoxy split with Rome in 1054, and today the Russian church counts some 165 million of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians.

The pope’s five-day trip to the world’s largest Spanish-speaking Catholic country is shining an uncomfortable spotlight on government and church shortcomings in dealing with social ills.

The addition of a stopover in Cuba was widely seen as a sign of Pope Francis’ willingness to go the extra mile to reach out a hand in friendship.

The historic meeting between the heads of the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church took pace at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport on Friday.

Meanwhile, the Mexican economy is now fourteenth in the world, owing largely to the extraction of natural resources in indigenous regions, whose inhabitants see few of the fruits of development. The Russian leader has clashed with other powers recently over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.

“Clearly, this meeting is God’s will”.

Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill will be continuing the dialog, Metropolitan Hilarion said. Simply meeting him was the point.

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Francis declared that he had been in Mexico twice: the first time in 1970 for a meeting of the Society of Jesus and the second time in 1999 as part of Pope John Paul II delegation.