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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Pope Francis was wrapping up his trip to Mexico on Wednesday with some of his most anticipated events: a visit in a Ciudad Juarez prison just days after a riot in another lockup killed 49 inmates and a stop at the Texas border when immigration is a hot issue for the U.S. presidential campaign.
He also scheduled a meeting with Mexican workers, grassroots groups and employers in an encounter at which he was likely to repeat his mantra on the need for dignified work for all and "land, labor and lodging."
Francis flew out of Mexico's capital with a final tour in the popemobile and serenades by mariachi bands as he nears the end of a whirlwind five-day visit that has focused heavily on the injustices faced by Mexico's poorest, most oppressed and vulnerable to the country's drug-fueled violence. He sought to offer comfort while taking Mexico's political and religious leaders to task for failing to do good for their people.
The pope makes a point of going to prisons on nearly every foreign trip, part of his longtime ministry to inmates and his belief that the lowest in society deserve dignity.
He has denounced abuse of pre-trial detention, called life sentences a "hidden death penalty" and urged a worldwide end to capital punishment. As pope, he continues to check in with Argentine prisoners he ministered to as archbishop of Buenos Aires.
In his penitentiary encounters, Francis often urges inmates not to give up hope, telling them that he, too, has sinned and been forgiven. He criticizes prison overcrowding, the slow pace of justice and lack of rehabilitation.
But he also tells inmates not to let their suffering lead to violence — a message he may repeat given the deadly riot last week at Monterrey's Topo Chico prison, where rival gang factions bloodied each other with hammers, cudgels and makeshift knives. Eight more inmates were injured Tuesday in a brawl at another prison.
Ciudad Juarez's Prison No. 3, where Francis planned to speak to inmates and visiting family members, is relatively calm these days. But it has seen violent clashes before that reflected the chaos outside its walls.
Not long ago Juarez was considered the murder capital of the world, as cartel-backed gang warfare fed homicide rates that hit 230 per 100,000 residents in 2010. A rash of killings of women, many of them poor factory workers who just disappeared, attracted international attention.
Times have changed. Last year, the city's homicide rate was about 20 per 100,000 people, roughly on par with Mexico's nationwide average of 14 per 100,000 — and well below what is being seen in current hotspots of drug violence such as the Pacific resort city Acapulco and surrounding Guerrero state.
Many businesses that closed during Juarez's darkest years have reopened. Tourists are again crossing over from the United States to shop and dine. People say they no longer have to leave parties early to avoid being on the streets after dark.
"At least now we can go out. We go to the parks. We can walk around a little more at that time of night," Lorena Diaz said, standing under a huge banner of Francis hanging from her second-floor balcony.
Diaz, who along with about 30 family members secured tickets for Wednesday's Mass, has followed news of Francis' tour and welcomed his calls for Mexicans not to tolerate corruption and violence.
"He's telling us to get out of the trenches, not to close ourselves off," Diaz said.
After the prison stop, Francis set a meeting with workers and advocacy groups at which he was expected to address poverty and income inequality.
Juarez's proximity to the U.S. has brought a job boom at hundreds of foreign-owned assembly plants known as "maquiladoras" that manufacture clothes, electronics and other goods to be shipped north. But many workers say conditions can be poor and pay low. At a recent demonstration, protesters said they were struggling to get by on wages of just $45 a week.
Francis also planned to visit the border with El Paso, Texas, where he was expected to stop at the fence, give a blessing in honor of migrants on the other side and pray for those who died trying to get there.
His visit closes with a large outdoor Mass, with thousands of victims of violence invited. It's to be simulcast live on giant screens on the other side of the Rio Grande at the Sun Bowl, where U.S. officials planned for at least 30,000 people.
Migration is a theme close to the pontiff's heart. He has demanded that countries welcome those fleeing poverty and oppression and denounced what he calls the "globalization of indifference" toward migrants.
It's a message that hasn't gone down well with some in the U.S., at a time when border apprehensions of families and unaccompanied minors rose significantly in the last three months of 2015.
Republican presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz have vowed to expel all the estimated 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally and build a wall along the entire border from Texas to California.
On the eve of Francis' trip, Trump criticized the pope's border stop.
"I don't think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico," Trump said in an interview with Fox. "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."
Late Tuesday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope is concerned about the plight of migrants everywhere, not just in the United States.
"The pope always talks about migration problems all around the world, of the duties we have to solve these problems in a humane manner, of hosting those who come from other countries in search of a life of dignity and peace," Lombardi said.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Latest on Pope Francis' visit to Mexico (all times local):
10:30 a.m.
Pope Francis has touched down in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, greeted by hundreds of people in bleachers set up at the city's airport.
It's the final stop on a whirlwind five-day visit to the country, and it's expected to be one of the most dramatic as the pope tackles issues of violence and immigration from an altar set up right along the U.S. border.
The faithful have been streaming along the city's closed-off streets to reach the site of the Mass, walking in pairs or in extended families, some bundled against the early morning cold.
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10:25 a.m.
The temporary altar where Pope Francis is to celebrate an open-air Mass is snug against the U.S.-Mexico border — with just a highway between its edge on the Rio Grande.
The skyline of El Paso, Texas, is clearly visible and on Tuesday a U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter was so close it seemed to nearly fly over the altar while making a low, lazy path above the Rio Grande.
Venders are hawking papal memorabilia — from yellow and white flags to baseball caps and t-shirts with the pontiff's likeness.
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9:15 a.m.
The airline that carried Pope Francis to Mexico says the plane carrying the pontiff was hit by a laser light from the ground as it arrived on Friday.
Alitalia says no one was hurt and the aircraft landed safely. It said Wednesday that the crew notified the Mexico City airport's control tower of the incident.
Officials around the world have been increasingly concerned about people training laser pointers on jetliners. In some cases, crewmembers have suffered eye damage.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration reported nearly 4,000 laser strikes in 2013.
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9:00 a.m.
Pope Francis has ended his vist to Mexico's capital with a final mariachi serenade. But he's still got major events on today's schedule for northern Mexico.
The Mexican Navy's mariachi band saw him away with a specially composed number: "Pope Francis, this isn't farewell, it's only see you later. May God bless you."
And then he boarded a jet for the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
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7:20 a.m.
Pope Francis is wrapping up his trip to Mexico on Wednesday with some of his most anticipated events. Those include a visit to a Ciudad Juarez prison just days after a riot in another lockup killed 49 inmates. He'll also stop at the Texas border at a moment when immigration is a hot issue for the U.S. presidential campaign.
The pope has left his lodgings at the papal nuncio's residence in Mexico City for the last time on this visit after a farewell serenade by mariachis. He's beaming and waving to thick crowds along the streets as he heads to the airport in his popemobile to catch a flight to the northern border metropolis of Juarez. After the stop there, he'll fly home to Rome.
Francis' final events cap a whirlwind five-day visit that focused heavily on the injustices faced by Mexico's poorest, most oppressed and vulnerable to the country's drug-fueled violence.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Before her son was born, Danielle Alves didn't know Luiz Gustavo would have microcephaly, a condition that has left the 3-year-old so disabled he can't walk, talk or eat without help.
Still, Alves says she would have gone ahead with the pregnancy even if she had known — and she thinks thousands of pregnant women caught up in Brazil's Zika virus outbreak should be required to do the same.
"I know it's very difficult to have a special needs child, but I'm absolutely against abortion," said Alves, who lives in Vitoria da Conquista, a city in the impoverished northeastern region where Brazil's tandem Zika and microcephaly outbreaks have been centered.
Alarm in recent months over the Zika virus, which many researchers believe can cause microcephaly in the fetuses of pregnant women, has prompted calls, both inside and outside Brazil, to loosen a near-ban on abortion in the world's most populous Catholic country.
But push for abortion rights is creating a backlash, particularly among the families of disabled children. Many have taken to social media apps like Facebook and WhatsApp, where more than half of Brazil's 200 million people are connected, to make their case. They argue that all babies, including those with severe forms of microcephaly, have a right to be born.
The Catholic Church and Pentecostal faiths, strong forces in this deeply religious country, have also been fighting back.
"Abortion is not the answer to the Zika virus, we need to value life in whatever situation or condition it may be," Sergio da Rocha, the president of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops, said earlier this week.
Abortion is illegal except in cases of rape, danger to the mother's life or anencephaly, another birth defect involving the brain — although in practice wealthy women in urban areas have relatively easy access to safe abortions in private clinics, while the poor often rely on dicey back-alley procedures.
The growing national debate is also spilling out into the courts, and will likely intensify in the months to come.
A judge in the central city of Goiania has said he will authorize abortions in severe cases of microcephaly. Some of the nation's top newspapers have also weighed in, running editorials urging abortion laws to be revisited.
"The most logical solution would be to revise the penal code relating to abortion, decriminalizing the practice. The legislation is three-quarters of a century old," the daily Folha de S. Paulo said in a recent editorial.
A prominent group of attorneys and psychologists is preparing a lawsuit calling for women infected with Zika during their pregnancies to be allowed to get legal abortions. The group, which in 2012 won an eight-year legal battle that succeeded in adding anencephaly to justifications for obtaining a legal abortion, hopes to take the suit before Brazil's Supreme Court early this year.
Before the outbreak, groups that support abortion groups were on the defensive following a proposal by the powerful Pentecostal lobby that would further restrict abortion access by adding additional hurdles for rape victims, such as getting an exam and filing a police report. The proposal has been approved by a House of Representatives committee, though its prospects in the full chamber are unclear.
When the first case of Zika was discovered in Brazil in the middle of last year, health officials here weren't unduly worried. First detected in a Ugandan forest in 1947, Zika has spread to parts of Asia and Oceania and is thought to have made the leap to Brazil through one or more infected tourists visiting the South American nation for the 2014 World Cup or perhaps an international canoeing tournament in Rio de Janeiro the same year.
It's spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, a common household pest that also transmits dengue and chikungunya. Zika is generally much milder, with only one out of five patients developing symptoms such as red eyes, a splotchy rash and fever.
A link to microcephaly has yet to be proven, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has pointed to strong evidence of a connection and urged pregnant women to avoid travel to 22 countries with active Zika outbreaks. The World Health Organization has declared an international health emergency.
Brazil and several other Latin American nations experiencing outbreaks have urged women to put off pregnancies. But critics say the recommendation is impractical in a region where access to sex education, contraception and pre-natal care is precarious and most pregnancies remain unplanned.
Sinara Gumieri, an attorney and legal counselor with the group that's preparing the lawsuit, said the abortion ban combined with the government's failure to eradicate the mosquito violate the right to health that's enshrined in Brazil's constitution.
"If tests confirm the virus (in a pregnant woman), she should then be given the right to choose between going through a high-risk prenatal period and pregnancy and give birth to her child or abort without fear of breaking the law," said Gumieri, of the Brasilia-based ANIS Institute of Bioethics.
Andressa Cristina dos Santos Cavagna, mother of a 3-year-old boy with a severe case of microcephaly, says abortion isn't the answer.
"Just because he is different from so-called normal children doesn't mean that he shouldn't be born," she said. "People who say that don't have love in their hearts."