Pope Francis to visit Mexico: Here are 4 things to expect

• Phoenix woman among hundreds expected to make journey to Mexico
• Experts says pope's visit may re-energize Catholics in Mexico, Southwest
• Pope also expected to address drug violence; some worry about security

The excitement for Deborah Serna was palpable; she was effusive when speaking about Pope Francis, who next month will make the closest papal visit to Arizona in nearly three decades.

“It’s something very profound,” the 52-year-old woman from Phoenix said. “It’s like a gift from God to meet him.”

Serna isone of dozens, maybe even hundreds, of Arizonans who plan on making the trip to the Mexican border in Juarez, where the Argentine pontiff will make the last stop on his four-city tour of Mexico from Feb. 12 to 17.

But unlike many of her fellow pilgrims, Serna is not Catholic.

The social worker and mother of two describes herself as Pentecostal, but professes a long-standing, deep admiration for the Catholic Church and for the spiritual head of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics.

“I am sure that the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ as the one true church at that time,” she explained.

“The pope to me is a very special person because he can reach any part of the globe and is the most important person, over any president.”

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Serna, an immigrant from Mexico, grew up Catholic, and most of her family remains in the church. But after moving to the U.S., she found in Pentecostalism  what she perceived as a closer, more personal connection with God.

Her story is representative not just of the experience of millions of former Catholics in the United States but of a growing trend in all of Latin America.

The pope’s upcoming visit, his third to the Americas, is expected to bring the issue of Catholics leaving the church to the forefront as he attempts to re-energize the faithful in the world’s second-largest Catholic country.

And as a political figure, the pope is also expected to use his position of influence and moral authority to speak out on issues that resonate well beyond Mexico.

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Some of the topics he is likely to confront:

Immigration: Looking south and north

Immigration is expected to be a major theme of the pope’s visit in Mexico, underscored by his plans to celebrate Masses at both the southern and northern borders.

“He is thinking of Mexico as a kind of cradle of (the Americas),  looking north and south and (at) Mexican immigration and Mexican emigration in both directions,” said Peter Casarella, a theology professor and director of the Latin American/North American Church Concerns Project at the University of Notre Dame.

The pope plans to visit Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state on the border with Guatemala, and Juarez, a city at the northern end across from El Paso.

“That says it all, really, that one of his main themes will be on migration,” said Kevin Appleby, the international migration policy director at the Center for Migration Studies, a Catholic think tank.

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In Chiapas, the pope will celebrate a Mass in San Cristobal de las Casas and visit with families in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capital. Chiapas has been the main entry point for tens of thousands of families and unaccompanied minors fleeing violence and poverty in the Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala in an attempt to reach the United States.

In Juarez, the pope will celebrate an open-air Mass near the border with El Paso. The two cities have long been linked by culture, commerce and history. But thousands of residents have fled north to peaceful El Paso to escape rampant violence from warring gangs and drug cartels that had turned Juarez, until recently, into one of the most violent cities in the world.

Juarez is also notorious for the hundreds of unsolved killings and disappearances of women since 1993; many had been raped and mutilated.

There is speculation that the pope may also seek to cross over into the United States from Mexico as a gesture of solidarity with migrants. The speculation is based on comments the pope made to journalists last January after announcing he planned to visit Philadelphia, New York City and Washington, D.C., this past September.

“To enter the United States from the border with Mexico would be a beautiful gesture of brotherhood and support for immigrants,” the pope said.

Whether Pope Francis crosses the border, “he is going to surprise us with something,” said Timothy Matovina, a theology professor and co-director of the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies.

The pope is going to “take the message to another level of depth and another level of bringing before us the sacredness of the lives of all our fellow human beings, especially the most vulnerable like the migrants,” Matovina said.

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It also comes as President Barack Obama’s administration has begun rounding up and deporting families seeking to remain in the U.S. after fleeing from Central America.

The recent roundups are intended in part to halt a new wave of Central Americans who have been arriving at the border and entering illegally following the unprecedented surge that occurred in the spring and early summer of 2014.

Appleby  expects the pope to call on both the U.S. and Mexican governments to offer protection to migrants seeking asylum, especially families and children.

“The protection of minors and protection of asylum seekers, particularly children and families, will be a central theme,”  Appleby said.

Francis has spoken out repeatedly in defense of the human rights of migrants since he was elected pope in March 2013.

“From the very beginning of his pontificate he made the situation of migrants around the world to be a central focus of what he means when he talks about overcoming the ‘globalization of indifference,' " said Notre Dame's Matovina.

Drug violence: An enormous problem

In Mexico, the pope is also expected to confront the country’s enormous problem with drug-cartel violence during a visit to the state of Michoacan, which has been especially hard hit. Drug violence has killed tens of thousands of people since 2006, according to various estimates.

In the past he has confronted organized crime in Italy, even going so far as to excommunicate members of the Mafia. As an archbishop in Buenos Aires, Francis also supported ministries of priests who stood up to drug lords, Matovina said.

“He sees this as a real blight on society,” Matovina said. "I am sure he is going to confront it in various ways while he is there (in Mexico) and speak very directly … of how this is a cancer that eats away at the fabric of society and it robs men, women and children, especially women and children, of the right they have to a dignified life.”

Some worry that confronting drug cartels could put the pope’s life in danger in Mexico. Unlike previous popes, Francis travels in a “pope mobile” that is open and unarmored.

“Obviously the security is going to be intense,” Casarella said. “I think we are all aware that he is embarking on a very dangerous mission.”

But Matovina doesn't believe those fears will dilute the pope's message. “He will say what he thinks he needs to say, and he won’t be hiding behind bulletproof glass, either, much to the chagrin of his security forces, no doubt.”

Church defections: Re-energizing Catholics

A landmark 2014 study from the Pew Research Center found a widespread erosion of Catholics leaving the church among U.S. Latinos and across Latin America, which together account for nearly 40 percent of the world’s Catholic population.

Deborah Serna, the Phoenix resident who plans to travel to see the pope,   is one of those converts. The Sonoran native said she knew no one when she came to the Valley as a military wife. She found solace in evangelical churches during the times her husband was away.

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“Maybe I was looking for that love, for the company, and that’s when I had an encounter where I told myself it was time to be baptized”, she explained. “I had never been evangelized. ... The Catholic Church is not just Hail Marys and the Lord’s Prayer; we have to learn to foster a relationship with God, it’s something different.”

But the Catholic Church has stepped up its effort to reach out to people like her seeking a deeper connection, and she said she doesn't rule out returning to Catholicism someday.

Mexico, the only country the pope will visit during his February trip, is home to about 113 million people; nearly 89 percent of them identify as Catholic, making the country one of the most devout in Latin America, the Pew study noted.

Nonetheless, about one in 10 Mexicans who were raised in the faith no longer identifies as Catholic, according to Jessica Martinez, senior researcher at Pew.

“It appears there has been some loss of ground in the Catholic Church in Mexico due to religious switching,” she said. “Among those who tell us they’ve left the Catholic Church, there is a roughly even split between the share who have joined a Protestant faith and those who have left religion altogether.”

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“What you really have in Mexico is a growing religious culture of choice,” he explained. “Here you have fewer cultural Catholics, and you have more people making a choice for whatever their religion is, including Catholicism.”

Matovina said he expects the pope’s visit to Mexico to stem this changing tide to some extent — more in in the long term.

“What you’re going to see more is an energizing of the base, local leaders, priests, laymen and local bishops,” he said. “They will get a real shot in the arm to be more bold evangelizers, not just hang out in the ... sanctuary, but to go out to the world.”

A very special Lady of Guadalupe

During the flight to the United States in September, Pope Francis acknowledged again that his original intent was to cross into the U.S. through the Mexican border at Juárez.

“But to go to Mexico, without visiting the Guadalupana, would have been a slap on the face,” he told journalists, using a term commonly used by everyday Mexicans to refer to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the country’s patron saint.

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"You can’t understand the Mexican culture without understanding Our Lady of Guadalupe,” said the Rev. Thomas Thompson, director of the Marian Library at the University of Dayton, a private Catholic school.

“Guadalupe has forged the Mexican culture. ... They have a wonderful, specific image or Our Lady, where they look to her as the mother of all Mexicans,” he added.

On Dec. 12, her feast day, the pope celebrated Mass in her honor at St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican.

“She loves us ... unconditionally, without expecting anything in return,” he told worshippers.

Francis' celebration of the Mass at the basilica in Mexico City "will be a hugely, big event,” Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas said. “He does have a very deep devotion to the Blessed Mother, not only to Our Lady of Guadalupe, but he’s also close to Our Lady of the Knots: the fact that human beings are being tied by many things: poverty, addiction, and Our Lady helps untie these knots that restrict human life and human dignity.”

Trip will have Arizona ties

Kicanas, whose diocese covers the Arizona border with Mexico, will be among several American clerics who will travel to Juarez for the pope’s visit.

He said he will be co-celebrating Mass with Pope Francis on Feb. 17, and that he expects the pope to make some kind of gesture along the border.

“Pope Francis is a man of great surprises and symbolism, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he went close to the border as he did when he visited Israel,” Kicanas said. “He went to the wall on his visit to Bethlehem and prayed there. It’s very possible that he will do that" in Mexico.

Back in Phoenix, Serna said she’s cautiously optimistic about her chance to see the pope in Juarez.

“When he came to Philadelphia, I was planning on going, I had an invitation. But I couldn’t go for many reasons,” she explained. “Now since they captured (drug lord) ‘El Chapo,' I don’t know what the situation will be like in Mexico.”

Nevertheless, for now she plans to fly and stay in El Paso, then meet with her friends who are Catholic priests and join them crossing the border.

With the chance to be so close to the pope, Serna said she does not know yet what she would say to him.

“I don’t think I have the words. I get goosebumps. I see this pope as the most most blessed man.”