Content area
Full Text
The Pope's visit to Mexico in January following the signing of his exhortation `The Church in America' was greeted with loving enthusiasm. Our correspondent in Mexico assesses the value of the document entitled `The encounter with the living Christ Jesus, the way to conversion, communion and solidarity in America '.
The first roar of five days' rapture greeted the Alitalia jumbo `Guiseppe Verdi' when it was spotted descending out of the peerless January blue. Mirrors on rooftops all over the valley flashed their novel welcome and the Mariachis in the presidential hangar started to blast out on their trumpets that most Mexican of welcomes, Cielito Lindo - `Dear little sky, laugh, don't cry'. The sky had much to laugh about because the only person, apart from the Virgin of Guadalupe herself, who can bring this enormous city to a standstill, was back for his fourth visit. He came to present the fruits of the synod of bishops of this continent, held in Rome during November and December 1997, in the form of his apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America (The Church in America), which he duly signed in Spanish, Portuguese, English and French later on that evening in the papal nunciature.
From the moment he started to descend the aircraft steps, bowed by age and Parkinson's, the unique magic of his presence and his mischievous grin began to work their wonder on the hearts of all Mexicans present, which, in the flesh or through the media, was most of them. He went first to receive the keys of the city and ad-libbed in Spanish in a way that no other foreigner gets away with, but which the hard-bitten politicians of the town council received with delighted affection. You are doubly Mexicans, he told them, citizens of Mexico the country and representatives of Mexico the city. Congratulations! Now the word Congratulaciones is not Spanish and my use of it and similar hopeful coinages has made me an object of pity for years. But in him everyone loved it and screamed their approval as he made a triumphant exit.
Then the Pope passed down the bottom of my road. How many of you can say that? The slightest exaggeration: just round the corner and a hundred...