In Mexico, Pope Francis was embraced but his message was refracted

Pope Francis blessing an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe during a Mass in Ecatepec, Mexico. Image credit: Gregorio Borgia / Associated Press / Alamy.

by David Agren.

President Claudia Sheinbaum expressed sympathies after the passing of Pope Francis earlier this week. Her tributes emphasized the words “humanist” and “humanistic.”

In a heartfelt X post shortly after the pope’s death on April 21, Sheinbaum described him as “a humanist who stood for the poor, peace, and equality. He left behind a great legacy of true love for one’s neighbor.” 

The next day, she played a short video of Francis at her mañanera press conference. The video recalled his 2016 visit to Mexico, along with highlights of his papacy. “Today more than ever we must recognize that the deeply humanistic legacy of Pope Francis is a gift that unites us.”

World leaders paid tribute to Pope Francis after his death. Many were sincere. Some were self-serving. A few portrayed the pope as a fellow traveller. 

Sheinbaum, like many leaders, posted a photo from a meeting with the pope – with hers coming in February 2024 ahead of the elections she would later decisively win. (Her opponent, Xóchitl Gálvez, also met the pope.) 

She christened the pope with the “humanist” language of her predecessor and mentor, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, while the video tribute drew selectively on Francis’ words and gestures. Her comments and video also attempted to portray the pope as a spiritual leader and fellow traveller, whose magisterium would lend legitimacy to an agenda that her predecessor and mentor AMLO described as moral as much as political.

In many ways, Sheinbaum wasn’t doing anything new. She simply followed her predecessors’ predilection for using the pope for political purposes – something previously verboten in the secular politics of Institutional Revolutionary Party rule until 1992, when Mexico and the Vatican established relations.

Former president Carlos Salinas wanted Pope John Paul II’s 1990 visit to legitimize himself after a scandalous election and support for a series of economic reforms and privatizations. The bishops from Mexico state took Enrique Peña Nieto to the Vatican, where he let slip in an audience with Pope Benedict XVI that he would marry his girlfriend, telenovela star Angelica Rivera. Televisa turned it all into a Christmas special.

Peña Nieto tried to use Francis, too. Francis visited Mexico in 2016, arriving to pomp in Mexico City, then travelling to Michoacán, Chiapas and Ciudad Juárez.

The pope excoriated Mexican political elites, chewed out his own bishops for failing to condemn drug cartel violence and urged seminarians in Ecatepec to not become “clerics of the state.”

This author covered the papal tour and wrote this final dispatch for Maclean’s magazine from the border, “Pope Francis asked indigenous populations in southern Chiapas state for forgiveness for the dispossession of their lands, demanded a better deal for poorly paid factory workers in Ciudad Juárez and told youth without options in Michoacán state – where outward migration was once rife and the drug trade has deep roots – to eschew the seemingly easy money of organized crime.”

Pope Francis ended with a Mass along the Rio Grande for migrants. He gave the trip’s most memorable comments on the flight home, saying in comments alluding to then-candidate Donald Trump: “(A) person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

Mexican politicians ignored all of it. They lined up to kiss the pope’s ring instead. Governors in the three states used the papal visits to promote tourism and themselves.

But AMLO, whose austere style squared with Francis’ famed frugality, paid attention from the sidelines. Neither AMLO nor Sheinbaum identify as Catholic – with AMLO calling himself “Christian” and Sheinbaum declaring herself “non-religious.” (Sheinbaum won’t be attending Francis’ funeral, sending interior minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez instead.)

AMLO identified with Francis from the start of his administration. An advert for his 2020 informe featured the Francis line, “Helping the poor is not communism” – prompting the electoral tribunal to pull the spot for violating laws on religious content. “Pope Francis is the one who guides me,” he said in 2023. He blasted Argentine President Javier Milei for badmouthing Francis and later compared himself to the pontiff. 

After her meeting with the pope, Sheinbaum posted passages from Francis’ encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” as part of an anti-neoliberal discourse. 

But both AMLO and Sheinbaum ignore large parts of Francis’ agenda – such as his focus on ecology. Other times, their interest appeared selective and contradictory. 

The mañanera video highlighted Francis’ apologizing for the “so-called conquest of the Americas” while visiting Bolivia in 2015. AMLO demanded Spain and the Vatican apologize for abuses committed 500 years ago – though he previously ignored Francisco’s actions in Bolivia. The video also spoke of the pope’s defence of migrants, while ignoring Mexico’s role as a U.S. migrant enforcer.

AMLO also tried to use Francis as a cudgel to bash the bishops – who didn’t have a close relationship – citing Francis’ 2016 tonguelashing. 

He criticized the hierarchy as tools of the elite for urging a change in security policy after a cartel boss murdered two elderly Jesuits in their parish in the Sierra Tarahumara. He claimed they “forgot” the atrocities occurring in past administrations and insisted they “are not following the example of Pope Francis because they are acting in cahoots with the Mexican oligarchy.”

AMLO proceeded to attack the Jesuits for demanding justice for the two priests and repeatedly criticized the Jesuit-sponsored Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Centre for representing the families of the 43 Ayotzinapa students.

The former president considered Francis, “The best pontiff in history.” He authentically admired him. But he also used him for political purposes – just like every other recent Mexican president and many world leaders.