Pope Francis concluded his visit to Mexico this evening celebrating a Mass in Ciudad Juarez that was transmitted live just yards across the border in El Paso.
The Pope’s final day of his six-day journey to the country included a stop at a prison this morning, and then a meeting with representatives of business and labor.
Before entering the stadium for Mass, he visited the migrants’ cross that overlooks the Rio Grande, blessing crowds across the river on the US side.
Drawing from the readings of today’s liturgy, the Holy Father noted that Jonah helped the people of Nineveh to see and become aware of their transgressions, and thus to repent.
They became a people “capable of weeping,” the Pope said. “To weep over injustice, to cry over corruption, to cry over oppression. These are tears that lead to transformation, that soften the heart; they are the tears that purify our gaze and enable us to see the cycle of sin into which very often we have sunk.”
The Pope spoke of the global phenomenon of migration, referring to it as a “humanitarian crisis.”
“This crisis which can be measured in numbers and statistics, we want instead to measure with names, stories, families,” he said.
The Pope invited the faithful to “ask our God for the gift of conversion, the gift of tears, let us ask him to give us open hearts like the Ninevites, open to his call heard in the suffering faces of countless men and women. No more death! No more exploitation! There is still time to change, there is still a way out and a chance, time to implore the mercy of God.”
