Pope Francis’s Busy Day in Mexico

The World Council of Churches says it is celebrating the historic meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Francis wraps up his day with a Mass at the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a silent prayer before the icon.

From the US border to the indigenous south, Francis will visit some of Mexico’s poorest and most violent corners on his five-day trip.

Pope Francis is rolling through the streets of the Mexican capital again after an afternoon break at the residence where he is staying.

A woman waves a blanket decorated with an image of Pope Francis along the route the pontiff will take upon arrival to Mexico City, Friday, Feb. 12, 2016.

Pope Francis is appearing exhausted toward the end of his second day in Mexico.

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”. The site has a capacity for 400,000 people.

Pope Francis has launched a broadside against endemic corruption on his first visit to Mexico as pontiff, calling on President Enrique Pena Nieto and his government to combat it. Having one of his portraits given to the pope fills Santamaria with pride, but, as a Mexican Catholic, he says the pope’s visit has meaning beyond his own feelings. Cuban President Raul Castro stood to the side during the ceremony, enjoying another moment in the global limelight after receiving Francis a year ago and restoring diplomatic relations with the United States recently, meeting President Barack Obama in Panama in April.

Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), said, “The meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill today in Cuba is an historic ecumenical event, and very timely in the context of the conflicts and crises now causing so much suffering in the world”. “He loves Mexico more than his predecessor”.

He also met with Mexico’s Catholic bishops, urging them to show more transparency and fight against the evils of the drug trade.

The pope has asked for time alone to pray quietly in front of the image after the mass.

The violence has claimed the lives more than a dozen priests over the past five years, while some dioceses have been accused to collecting “narcolimosnas” or “drug alms”, and drug bosses – who often consider themselves proper Catholics – construct and fix parishes and sponsor patron saint feast days.

“Just by looking at (the Virgin), Mexico can be understood completely”, Francis said earlier.

Francis’ entire trip is shining an uncomfortable spotlight on the government’s failure to solve entrenched social ills that plague many parts of Mexico – poverty, rampant gangland killings, extortion, disappearances of women, crooked cops and failed city services.

Mexico’s homicide rate rose precipitously after then-President Felipe Calderon launched a war on drug cartels shortly after taking office in 2006, with the bloodshed peaking around 2011. Originally he also meant to meet with cultural figures, but that was nixed when the Vatican delayed his Ecatepec Mass by an hour so worshippers could arrive in the morning rather than camp out overnight in potentially freezing temperatures.