The symbolism of good and evil is uncanny this week. As Pope Francis makes his visit to Mexico, business mogul and self-prophesized “best jobs president God has ever created” Donald Trump unravels their conflicting views of the bordering country.
In an interview with Fox Business Network last week, Trump alluded to the idea that the pope was playing as a pawn for the Mexican government.
“I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico,” Trump said. “I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is. They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.”
According to multiple news sources and peace studies done by the University of San Diego, Mexico is in fact not winning whether it is socio-economically or otherwise, due to its overpowering drug cartels and pseudo-dictatorial policies.
The pope is visiting Mexico to pray with migrants along the border. Many families rely on crossing over to the US illegally to sell goods in markets or to be with family members who already live in the US. This, of course, is a major tipping point in the Trump presidential campaign because one of his biggest claims is that he will build a big, “beautiful” wall across the southern border that “Mexico will pay for.”
Not only is Trump being insatiably insensitive to both the pope and all of Mexico for making this a political stand, he is also grossly inaccurate when it comes to foreign relations and immigration (shown by his lack of saying anything of substance ever in his campaign).
Pope Francis is seen as a beacon for peace, and when he visits places like Mexico, he is doing so to spread the Catholic mission while promoting sustainability. Borders, if anything, are a hindrance to the pope, who has a global mindset, whereas Trump is focused on closing off the US and isolating it even more from the rest of the world.
The pope’s main focus was on immigrants and cases of poverty in bordering towns, especially among the indigenous people of Mexico. In a small bordering town of Chiapas, this is recognized as an especially important issue to the Catholic Church. Pedro Arriaga, spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese of San Cristobal, told the “Los Angeles Times” about their plight.
“In Chiapas, there is a situation of extreme poverty, of marginalization of the indigenous community, of social conflicts,” Arriaga said.
While Trump continues his campaign for hate, he criticizes figures like the pope simply for being compassionate to those less fortunate and sullying their image for his limited worldview.
Pope's visit was entirely televised • Feb 22, 2016 at 11:30 am
Chiapas is not a town. It’s an entire state bordering Guatemala (not the U.S.) with one of the highest Native American populations in Mexico.
Pope Francis visited Chiapas to acknowledge the indigenous peoples who have been marginalized in Mexico despite their connections to Catholicism and spreading the faith: San Juan Diego, a poor Native American, was chosen by the Virgen Mary (of Guadalupe) to proclaim where her alter should be built. Her image is said to have appeared on the Native’s smock as he delivered roses to a church.
The Pope also proclaimed that as a predominately mestizo (mixed ancestry, namely Native American and Spanish) nation, Mexico should do more to help improve the poor socioeconomic status its indigenous peoples currently still hold.
Regarding the border, he visited Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua. Juarez is directly across El Paso, Texas. This fact was evident as people on both sides of the border gathered to hear the pope’s message about the deep connection between Mexico and the U.S.