Pope delivers message of peace to Chiapas families in Mexico

Tens of thousands cheered Pope Francis on Monday (February 15) as he ended a trip to Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas with a rally for families in the state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez.

Admirers lined the streets as the Pope made his way through in his popemobile, waving and smiling.

He ascended the stage and listened to messages from Mexico’s youth.

“The adolescents and young people – we are the spoiled ones of God, we are the hope of the Church,” said one young man, Manuel Morales Montoya, surrounded by his family.

During his sermon, Pope Francis reminded the audience to look at family struggles from a different perspective.

“To live in a family is not always easy. Often, it is painful and tiring. But I believe what can be applied to family is something I’ve referred to more than once – I prefer a wounded family that tries everyday to combine love to a family and society sick due to confinement or comfort of fear instead love. I prefer a family that tries over and over to begin again to a family or a society that is narcissistic and obsessed by luxury and comfort,” he said.

He elicited a collective chuckle when he referred to family spats.

“A perfect family never talks. Lie! It’s convenient once in awhile to argue and let a plate fly, that’s fine. Don’t be afraid. The only thing is that the day must not end without achieving peace,” he said.

The Pope’s appearance at Tuxtla Gutierrez’s Victor Manuel Reyna Stadium capped off a long day in Mexico’s south.

It began with the pontiff preaching to a packed to a packed crowd at a sports ground in Chiapas, where he quoted the Popol Vuh, a sacred Maya text, and drew comparisons between Catholic and indigenous values.

He said the Mass before a Hollywood-style stage set replica of the facade of the colonial-era city’s main cathedral.

The pope last year apologised for the role of the Church in the conquest of Latin America and left a Vatican decree while in Chiapas authorizing translations of the liturgy into indigenous languages.

The state of Chiapas was the scene of the Zapatista uprising of Maya rebels in the 1990s. It is now the frontline of a government crackdown on illegal immigration to the United States from Central America.

When the Zapatistas burst onto the scene, more than two- thirds of Chiapas’ population was Roman Catholic. The expansion of evangelical Christianity through poor indigenous towns since has driven the number down to around 60 percent, making it Mexico’s least-Catholic region.

In the colonial mountain city of San Cristobal de las Casas, the pope prayed in front of the tomb of Bishop Samuel Ruiz, a champion for indigenous rights who served as a mediator between the Zapatistas and the government.

Ruiz, who died in 2011, long lobbied to permit Mass in languages such as Tzotzil because many of the region’s Maya residents do not speak Spanish.

Francis is visiting some of the most marginalised parts of Mexico. On Sunday (February 14), he took a swipe at the rich and corrupt elite in a Mass near the cinder block slums of Ecatepec, one of the country’s most violent cities.

The poverty rate in Chiapas, already the most impoverished state in Mexico, has risen in recent years to more than three-quarters of the population.

On Tuesday (February 16), he will speak to youths in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan state, where warring drug gangs cook much of the methamphetamine smuggled into the United States.

He will then travel to Ciudad Juarez, which borders the U.S. state of Texas, where he will pray for migrants and victims of violence.