Pope Francis concludes Panama trip with mass and visit to HIV carriers

Francisco will send a last message to young Catholics gathered in Panama this Sunday, before concluding a visit focused on the tragedy of Latin American migrants and in which he could not escape the shadow of pedophile scandals in the clergy.

The new generations of Catholics will hear the pope's homily at Metro Park, in an outdoor mbad that is expected to be very large. With this ceremony ends the vigil that tens of thousands of pilgrims began Saturday as part of World Youth Day (WYD).

On the eve, Francisco, in a message very in tune with the news, asks the "Millennials" Catholics to live "something bigger than life on social networks", while drawing attention to the "culture of abandonment ". "this is reinforced among young people by the lack of" real spaces to feel called ".

Before returning to Rome, the pope will visit a church-run shelter where 18 people living with HIV live. According to the UNAIDS organization, 36.7 million people were living with the virus worldwide in 2016, including 21,000 worldwide. Panama

Francisco will meet the WYD volunteers later and leave Panamanian territory around 6 pm local time.

Throughout this five-day visit, the 82-year-old pontiff recounted the ills afflicting the continent with more and more Catholics: from political corruption to the "scourge" of feminicide, to the tragedy of migration. forced.

Francisco condemned the stigmatization of migrants as responsible for "social evil" and offered the help of the Church to overcome "fears and doubts". In this sense, he also questioned the "culture of intimidation, harbadment and intimidation".

Venezuelans have the largest recorded migration movement in Latin America and have been victims of xenophobia outbreaks in Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador.

Since 2015, 2.3 million Venezuelans (7.6% of the 30 million inhabitants) have emigrated due to the collapse of the economy and the political crisis in their country, according to the statistics of the UN.

Francisco once again avoided taking a stand against the crisis in Venezuela, where the government of Nicolás Maduro faces strong pressure from the United States to leave power, while the number of countries wishing to ignore its mandate and recognize in its place the head of Parliament, Juan Guaidó , interim governor increases.

Central America is also facing a major exodus. Caravans with thousands of Hondurans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans are trying to reach the United States, despite the anti-immigrant policies of President Donald Trump, which includes plans to build a wall on the Mexican border.

During their travels, they faced "manifestations of xenophobia and discrimination," according to the UN. Although his trip was also intended to be a parenthesis in the church's badual scandals, Francisco could not avoid the thorny file.

In a message to the religious gathered in Panama, Saturday he admitted that the church "is hurt by his sin", a few weeks before the crucial meeting of bishops convened by Francisco to discuss pedophilia scandals and their concealment. The meeting will take place at the Vatican from 21 to 24 February.

It is expected that this meeting will lead to "concrete measures" to fight "this terrible plague," said the day before the director of the press of the Holy See, Alessandro Gisotti.

Although during this trip, he did not explicitly condemn the badual abuse that eroded the credibility of the church, Francisco described what priests were doing as "horrible crime" during a lunch with young people from five continents in a seminar.

Since the first revelations of 2000, the scandal has escalated and last year alone, the Church in Chile, the United States and Germany shook the Church.
"Every country has its protocol and its regulations according to the state, we applied the policy of zero tolerance," said Miguel Ochogavía, Panamanian bishop of Columbus.