It is fitting that Pope Francis will celebrate his first mass on Mexican soil at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is impossible to overstate the reverence and tenderness with which she is held by Mexicans, as well as her tremendous power as a national symbol.
The image of "La Virgen Morena", the dark virgin, is found everywhere in Mexico -- on the backs of crowded buses, hanging from seemingly every necklace, gaudily painted on millions of roadside shrines, and hanging in every house, rich or poor. Her presence is palpable.
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