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Even Pope Francis has a Valentine. A little girl in a wheelchair presented Francis with a handmade Valentine's Day card Sunday while he was visiting a Mexico City pediatric hospital.
"You made this?" Francis asked as he accepted the card with a big heart on the front. "Gracias."
The pope bent down and kissed dozens of sick kids gathered for his visit, playfully mussing the hair of the older ones and stopping to chat with those who wanted to.
Some posed for selfies with the pope. Several rose from their wheelchairs to embrace him.
Francis also played doctor, giving a little boy some medicine from a dropper.
The pope makes a point of stopping at children's hospitals during his foreign trips, both to visit with the kids and to thank the staff for caring for them. While parts of the encounters are televised, Francis also visits bedridden patients in private for more personal encounters.
On his way to the hospital, Francis passed adoring crowds at Mexico City's iconic Angel of Independence.
As his motorcade rounded the monument on Paseo de la Reforma boulevard, several dozen nuns rushed to the metal barricades to salute the pontiff.
A group of young lay missionaries from the northern state of Durango were on hand to sing the traditional Mexican folk song "Cielito Lindo" as Francis went by in the popemobile.
Group leader José Cruz Morón Alba strummed his guitar and led the mostly teenagers through a rousing rendition of the tune. Morón Alba said he liked the pope's message earlier in the day condemning Mexico's "dealers of death," a reference to the drug trade.
Durango is part of Mexico's so-called golden triangle, where opium poppies and marijuana are harvested to feed drug trafficking.
During his visit to crime-ridden Ecatepec de Morelos, a municipality in the State of Mexico, Francis urged Mexican seminarians to be true pastors devoted to God instead of "clerics of the state," an implicit but stinging criticism of the country's Roman Catholic hierarchy.
Francis' jab comes in an inscription he left in the guestbook at the Ecatepec seminary after celebrating Mass. It admonishes priests-in-training to always keep Jesus at front in their minds and to "prepare to be pastors of the faithful people of God and not 'clerics of the state.'"
While there are exceptions, the Mexican church hierarchy tends to be staunchly conservative and known for its close ties to the wealthy and powerful governing elite.
Even members of the Mexican clergy have faulted church leaders for prizing relations with the government over the pastoral needs of ordinary faithful. They cite as a recent example the tepid response by bishops to the 2014 disappearances of 43 students at the hands of police in Guerrero state.
The bishops' frosty relations with Francis were on display Saturday when the pope criticized what he called gossiping, career-minded and aloof clerics who should instead stand by their flock and offer "prophetic courage" in facing down the drug trade. His comments got only mild applause.
