Hundreds of faithful gathered this Thursday at the foot of the Virgin of Guadalupe, in the Basilica of Mexico City, to thank the pontificate of Pope Francis and pray for the rest of his soul. The day was marked by a solemn mass in his honor.
The Eucharistic celebration was chaired at noon by Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, Archbishop Primado de México, who during the homily recalled that Pope Francis lived his ministry “as a good successor of Peter.”
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The Cardinal stressed that one of the main teachings of the Pontiff was his insistence on warning of “the risks of war, the risks of clashes.” In that sense, he stressed: “If we are different, it is not so that we fight each other, but so that we complement each other and we can enrich each other.”
He also added that Pope Francis “insisted on always extending the presence of the Church between the poor and most vulnerable of society, in different ways.”
Guadalupe Basilica: “Pope Francis’s favorite place”
Aguiar Retes also shared personal anecdotes with the pontiff, who confessed to having visited Mexico twice before assuming the papacy. The first was as a priest, exclusively to learn about the Guadalupano sanctuary. The second, as a Jesuit provincial, during a meeting in Mexico City, when he also took the opportunity to visit the Marian temple again.
Already as Pope, Francisco returned in 2016. Of that visit, the cardinal recalled a significant phrase that the Pontiff shared: “I did not realize the time I passed, until they were for me, they told me: ‘Holy Father, the crowd is waiting for him.’ And I had to leave our mother.”
For this deep connection, the cardinal said that the Basilica of Guadalupe was “the preferred place of Pope Francis and therefore, here, before our mother, we asked him for his arrival at the father’s house.”
“The tears of sadness came out”
At the end of the Mass, the faithful went to the memorial installed in the atrium of the basilica, where they placed candles and flowers as a sample of grief and gratitude.
“The tears of sadness came out,” Alonso Martínez, a seminarian of the fellowship of the operators of the Kingdom of Christ, told ACI. “Pope Francis was a pilgrim who really walked and walked on this earth towards God.”
Fernanda Tovar, another assistant, said moved, but also hopeful: “To know that it is a new era for the Church, for us, as young.”
Diego López Colín
I am a graduate of journalism at the Carlos Septién García school with experience of religious institutional communication. Since 2016 I write for digital media and, since 2018, I report the most important news about the Catholic event in Mexico for the Ewtn news channel. ACI Press correspondent in Mexico since 2023.