Pope Francis expressed his solidarity this Monday with the caravans of Latin American migrants who "seek freedom and well-being" in the United States, by celebrating a great party dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe with a mass in the Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican.
The first Latin American pontiff in history spoke in his mother tongue, Spanish, to denounce the plight of the inhabitants of that continent both now and in the past.
The Argentine Jesuit commemorated the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which is celebrated on December 12.
For Catholic believers, it commemorates the anniversary of one of several Marian apparitions witnessed by a native Mexican named Juan Diego in 1531. Every year, millions of pilgrims flock to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which houses the image they say tradition, was printed on the man's cloak.
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In his homily, Francis said that the Virgin appeared "to accompany the American people on this difficult path of poverty, exploitation, and socioeconomic and cultural colonialism."
And he said that she now continues to be a mother figure for Latin Americans.
“She is there, in the middle of the caravans that, seeking freedom and well-being, head north
,” he said, referring to the caravans of migrants traveling to the United States.
Francisco has made attention to immigrants and refugees a hallmark of his papacy.
On this occasion he also warned against any ideological exploitation of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose mestizo complexion has long been considered by the Catholic Church as a positive model of the encounter between Europe and America in colonial times.
Pope Francis arrives at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican to preside over a mass in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Monday, December 12, 2022.Gregorio Borgia / AP
Francis noted that the Church is preparing the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the Marian apparition, and asked that they take place in the context of the true "spirit" of Guadalupe.
"I am concerned about the ideological-cultural proposals from various places that want to appropriate the encounter of a people with their Mother, who want to de-miscegenize and make up the Mother," he said.
Andrew Chestnut, professor of Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, told The Associated Press news agency that the comment was an apparent reference to the increasingly intense debate over the role of the Catholic Church in the Iberian conquest and colonization of the Americas.
"Although for a long time she has been a symbol of Mexican miscegenation, the mixture of indigenous and Spanish cultures, the Virgin of Guadalupe has recently been the target of miscegenation, as the pope said, by the left and by the right," he said.
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The expert said some on the left see her as purely indigenous, while some on the right object to her darkening skin tone in portraits over time “and prefer to see her as a lighter-skinned, European invocation of Mary. ”
Francis prayed that this controversy does not detract from the centrality of Guadalupe for the faithful in America.
"Please, let's not allow the message to be distilled into mundane and ideological patterns," he pleaded.