Papal Tour of Mexico May Include Stop in Tijuana to Focus on Migrants

Pope John Paul II’s planned trip to Mexico in May, widely viewed as accelerating a gradual trend toward improved relations between the Mexican government and the Roman Catholic Church, may include a visit to Tijuana aimed at dramatizing the plight of migrants and refugees, church officials in Mexico say.

The Pope’s itinerary is still tentative, but church authorities say the fast-growing city across the international boundary from San Diego was included on a preliminary 17-city agenda, and that schedulers at the Vatican may include Tijuana on the final program. Any visit to the border would focus worldwide attention on the predicament of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who annually pass through the city, which has become one of the world’s great migratory centers, a gateway to the developed world.

“Tijuana is certainly one of the cities being considered for a stop,” said Father Adalberto Gonzalez Gonzalez, a spokesman for Guadalajara Bishop Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, who heads a Mexican church commission recommending an itinerary. “The city is strong and increasingly important, and it is at the forefront of the phenomenon of immigration.”

The Pope is slated to arrive in Mexico City on May 6. A tentative schedule released earlier this month in Mexico City would put him in Tijuana on May 13, the final day of his Mexican tour, after whirlwind stops in far-ranging cities from Merida on the Yucatan Peninsula to Acapulco along the Pacific Coast to Monterrey and Chihuahua in the north. John Paul may also visit Guatemalan refugee camps in the southern state of Campeche, emphasizing his concern for the dispossessed.

However, Gonzalez stressed that no final decision has been made about the pontiff’s agenda. “There are 105 bishops in Mexico,” Gonzalez noted, “and each one wants the Pope to visit his area.”

The Pope, who is expected to speak about a wide variety of topics, from poverty to narcotics trafficking to the foreign debt, is seeking to reach out to all levels of Mexican society, according to church leaders.

While in Mexico, John Paul reportedly may preside over the official canonization of Juan Diego, the Indian peasant whose 16th-Century visions of the Virgin Mary accelerated the conversion of Mexico’s indigenous population and gave Latin America its patroness, the Virgin of Guadalupe. Diego has already been beatified, the step preceding sainthood.

Word from Rome on John Paul’s final itinerary is expected in November. The prelate last visited Mexico in January, 1979.

Catholic authorities in Tijuana are ecstatic about the possibility.

“We are very optimistic that the Holy Father will decide to come to Tijuana,” said Father Monico Margarito Hernandez, secretary for Tijuana Bishop Emilio Berlie. “It is an ideal spot to address the issue of migration.”

The Tijuana diocese helps support a shelter, the Centro Scalabrini/Casa de Migrante, which provides temporary housing and food for Mexicans, Central Americans and others en route to the United States or returning from the north. In addition, Mother Theresa, the Albanian-born nun and Nobel Prize winner who garnered international acclaim for her work among Calcutta’s poor, visited Tijuana in May 1988; the order she founded now runs a seminary in Tijuana.

“Mother Theresa’s presence may help us” in attracting a papal visit, noted Father Hernandez of Tijuana.

A papal visit to Tijuana would undoubtedly draw Catholic leaders from both sides of the international line. Church officials in border communities traditionally invite each other to ceremonies marking visits by dignitaries, noted Msgr. I. B. Eagen, attorney and former chancellor with the Diocese of San Diego. He said he hopes that John Paul will visit Tijuana.

“One of the Pope’s overriding concerns is human rights, and that (immigration) is an issue that deeply involves human rights,” said Msgr. Eagen. “The Pope has shown concern for people who are pilgrims and immigrants.”

Although the great majority of Mexico’s 82 million people are Catholics, the church has long had a severely circumscribed role in the nation’s affairs. That is the product of constitutional provisions aimed at reducing the influence of a powerful institution historically identified with Latin American elites. Among other things, Mexican law restricts church ownership of property and prohibits the nation’s 20,000 priests from voting or otherwise engaging in political activity.

However, divisions between the church and state have eased in recent years, as both sides have advocated greater dialogue. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in a remarkable step, invited members of the church hierarchy to attend his inauguration last Dec. 1. The move was seen as part of the new chief executive’s avowed desire to reach out to diverse groups. The government’s decision to allow John Paul’s visit next May is widely viewed as part of the same trend of improved relations, although, as Father Gonzalez from Guadalajara observed, “We have a long way to go.”

Meanwhile, the church in Mexico is facing challenges from evangelical Protestant groups, often based in the United States, which have gained a strong foothold in recent years. Many sects have been drawn to Tijuana, a city of up to 1.5 million residents, and other border communities, a movement that has worried church authorities.