LEON – Pope Benedict met a small group of victims of Mexico’s raging drug violence on Saturday after he spoke out against the “evil” of narcotics on his first official visit to the world’s second-most populous Roman Catholic country.
Brutal clashes between drug cartels and the state have claimed more than 50,000 lives over the past five years. President Felipe Calderon invited eight people swept up in the turmoil for a private audience with the pope, his office said.
Relatives of a soldier and a policeman killed in combat with cartels, a man who survived a kidnapping and the sister of a student shot by stray bullets during a street fight were among the eight, who each spoke briefly with the pope.
Pope Benedict began his three- day visit to Mexico in the central city of Leon on Friday. En route from Rome, he said it was the duty of the church to “unmask the evil” behind drugs.
Mr Calderon, from the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, which receives strong support from Catholics, has been criticised by the opposition for the timing of the pope’s visit, 14 weeks before the next presidential election.
Battered by the surge in killings that Mr Calderon’s crackdown on the drug gangs unleashed, the PAN is lagging behind the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
Mr Calderon cannot run for re-election and his party’s candidate, Josefina Vazquez Mota, trails the PRI front-runner, Enrique Pena Nieto, by double digits in most opinion polls.
Many devotees camped out for more than 24 hours at the site where Pope Benedict spoke yesterday. “The pope will give us courage considering all the problems we have,” said Paulina Suarez, who travelled from the nearby state of Aguascalientes for the Mass. “He will help us move forward.” – (Reuters)