Mary accompanies migrants heading north, pope says on Guadalupe feast

VATICAN CITY (CNS)–During this “bitter time” of war, hunger, injustice and poverty, Our Lady of Guadalupe invites everyone to open their lives to her son, Jesus, and to learn to love others like he does, Pope Francis said.
“The Lord, through the Virgin Mother, continues to give us his son, who calls us to fraternity, to set aside selfishness, indifference and enmity, inviting us to get involved with each other ‘without delay,’ to go out to meet our brothers and sisters who have been forgotten and discarded by our consumerist and indifferent societies,” he said.
Today, just like five centuries ago when Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to St. Juan Diego, she “came to accompany the American people on this hard road of poverty, exploitation, socioeconomic and cultural colonialism,” the pope said in his homily during a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“She is in the midst of the caravans that walk northward in search of freedom and well-being. She is in the midst of the American people, whose identity is threatened by a savage and exploitative paganism, wounded by the active preaching of a practical and pragmatic atheism,” the pope said, in handwritten remarks that were not part of his previously prepared text.