Parents of 43 missing Mexican students, whose case has caused international outrage, decided to skip Pope Francis's mass at the Mexico-US border Wednesday because they lacked the means to go.
Relatives of the teacher trainees had sought for months to get a private audience with Francis during his five-day visit to Mexico, which ends Wednesday with a huge mass in Ciudad Juarez.
While they were not granted a private meeting, the parents were offered three seats at the service in Ciudad Juarez.
"They couldn't go. We don't have the material or logistical resources" to travel there, Vidulfo Rosales, an attorney representing the parents, told AFP.
But the families were able to send the Argentine-born pontiff a letter through Mexican Jesuits.
Representatives of local human rights organizations are due to attend the mass, during which the pope is expected to address the drug violence that has left 100,000 people dead or missing in 10 years.
Authorities say the 43 students were abducted in September 2014 by corrupt police in Iguala, southern Guerrero state, and handed over to a drug gang, which killed them and incinerated their bodies at a garbage dump.
But two foreign independent teams of investigators and forensic experts have rejected the official conclusion, saying there was no evidence of a massive fire at the dump.
The case has been the biggest challenge of President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration.
Parents of 43 missing Mexican students, whose case has caused international outrage, decided to skip Pope Francis’s mass at the Mexico-US border Wednesday because they lacked the means to go.
Relatives of the teacher trainees had sought for months to get a private audience with Francis during his five-day visit to Mexico, which ends Wednesday with a huge mass in Ciudad Juarez.
While they were not granted a private meeting, the parents were offered three seats at the service in Ciudad Juarez.
“They couldn’t go. We don’t have the material or logistical resources” to travel there, Vidulfo Rosales, an attorney representing the parents, told AFP.
But the families were able to send the Argentine-born pontiff a letter through Mexican Jesuits.
Representatives of local human rights organizations are due to attend the mass, during which the pope is expected to address the drug violence that has left 100,000 people dead or missing in 10 years.
Authorities say the 43 students were abducted in September 2014 by corrupt police in Iguala, southern Guerrero state, and handed over to a drug gang, which killed them and incinerated their bodies at a garbage dump.
But two foreign independent teams of investigators and forensic experts have rejected the official conclusion, saying there was no evidence of a massive fire at the dump.
The case has been the biggest challenge of President Enrique Pena Nieto’s administration.
