Pope Francis just visited one of Mexico's poorest, most violent cities

Thomson Reuters

Pope Francis celebrates mass at Guadalupe's basilica in Mexico City.

Pope Francis headed to one of the poorest, most dangerous cities in Mexico on Sunday to celebrate Mass before a crowd of hundreds of thousands that residents hope will give them strength to cope with drug-gang violence.

A gritty expanse of cinder-block homes north of the Mexican capital, Ecatepec, which is home to 1.6 million people, has seen a surge in crime in recent years as it expanded to cover surrounding hillsides and became infested with warring drug cartels.

Fueled by a weak economy and youth unemployment, gang violence has driven Ecatepec's murder rate to one of Mexico's highest.

It is also notorious for the unsolved murders of women, whose bodies have been found abandoned in garbage dumps and tossed in a canal only miles from where Francis will speak on Sunday.

"We are living through a period of great violence ... May (the pope) give us strength to continue to bear this, to keep struggling against it," said Maria Dolores Angeles Martinez, a 26-year-old housewife from Ecatepec, wearing a T-shirt welcoming Francis.

REUTERS/Daniel Aguilar

Federal police search men for drugs and weapons during an antinarcotics operation in Ecatepec, Mexico, November 13, 2009. The operation is part of an ongoing campaign aimed at reducing crime problems.

"The pope comes to Mexico at a very ugly moment," said Conchita Tellez, 65, who traveled 38 hours by bus from the northern border city of Mexicali to see the pontiff. "And he comes to pray for us and for all those who lost hope and have submerged the country in blood and violence," she told the AP.

Across the country, more than 100,000 people have been killed in drug violence over the last decade and some 26,000 are missing.

President Enrique Pena Nieto has failed to significantly curb the bloodshed, with murders rising last year after falling early in his term.

Before becoming president, Pena Nieto was governor of the State of Mexico that is the home to Ecatepec. In the second half of his 2005-2011 term as governor, the murders of women doubled. 

Since 2005, the state government figures indicate that more than 2,443 women have been murdered in the state, with a further 4,281 reported missing, according to Al Jazeera.

REUTERS/Henry Romero

Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto attends an event at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City July 17, 2015.

Corruption and incompetence are rampant in underfunded police forces across Mexico.

The vast majority of murders are never solved and family members complain authorities show little interest in the cases of the missing.

Unlike his predecessor Pope Benedict, who visited Mexico's conservative heartland in 2012, Francis is stopping in some of the country's most troubled corners on his first trip as pontiff.

On Saturday, he spoke out against endemic corruption in a speech before Pena Nieto and political elites.

"Experience teaches us that each time we seek the path of privileges or benefits for a few to the detriment of the good of all," the pontiff said, according to the AP, "sooner or later the life of society becomes a fertile soil for corruption, drug trade, exclusion of different cultures, violence and also human trafficking, kidnapping and death, bringing suffering and slowing down development."

REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

A woman takes photos of graffiti of Pope Francis with her mobile phone in Ecatepec, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico, February 4, 2016. Pope Francis is scheduled to celebrate a mass in Ecatepec during his visit to Mexico City.

Pena Nieto's government has drawn criticism for failing to go after corrupt politicians, even those indicted in the US. He, his wife, and his finance minister have all been embroiled in conflict-of-interest scandals over houses purchased from government contractors. 

Addressing Mexico's bishops on Saturday, Francis exhorted them to speak out more boldly against drug traffickers, calling the drug trade a social cancer eating away at the country.

"I urge you not to underestimate the moral and anti-social challenge, which the drug trade represents for young people and Mexican society as a whole," Pope Francis said during a 40-minute address to Mexican bishops, according to Mexico-based reporter David Agren.

"The magnitude of this phenomenon … and the gravity of the violence … do not allow us as pastors of the church to hide behind anodyne denunciations," the pontiff added. Mexico's drug violence is a problem his predecessor, Pope Benedict, avoided referencing during his trip to the country four years ago. 

Reuters

A working class housing sprawl is seen on the side of a hill in the Mexico State neighborhood of Ecatepec June 7, 2001.

Over the last five years, more than a dozen priests have been killed, a number that rises to 40 over the last decade, helping to make Mexico the most dangerous country in the Americas for priests, according to El Pais.

Pope Francis will continue south after his visit in Ecatepec. He will say Mass with indigenous communities in Mexico's poorest state, Chiapas, and speak with young people in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan state where drug gangs and armed vigilante groups have waged a bloody conflict.

The pope will end his trip in the notorious northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, where he will address the tide of illegal immigration into the US, meet relatives of victims of violence, and visit a prison.