Pope on Mexican feast day sympathizes with migrant caravans

Pope Francis sympathized Monday with the caravans of Latin Americans “seeking freedom and well-being” in the U.S. as he celebrated a major feast day dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe with a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

History’s first Latin American pope spoke off the cuff in his native Spanish to denounce the plight facing Latin Americans today and in the past.

The Argentine Jesuit was marking the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which falls each Dec. 12. To Catholic believers, the date is the anniversary of one of several apparitions of the Virgin Mary witnessed by an Indigenous Mexican man named Juan Diego in 1531. Every year, millions of pilgrims flock to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which holds an image of the Virgin that is said to have miraculously imprinted itself on the man’s cloak.

In his homily, Francis said Mary appeared then “to accompany the American people in this difficult path of poverty, exploitation and socioeconomic and cultural colonialism.”

And he said she remains a mother figure to Latin Americans today.

“She’s there, in the middle of the caravans that, seeking freedom and well-being, head north,” he said, referring to the caravans of migrants seeking to cross into the United States.

Francis has made caring for migrants and refugees a hallmark of his papacy.

In his homily, Francis also warned against any ideological exploitation of the image of the Guadalupe Virgin, whose mixed, mestiza complexion has long been held up by the Catholic Church as a positive model of the colonial-era encounter between Europe and the Americas.