DHAKA: Pope Francis has decried the ‘tragedy’ of people who are forced to migrate, as he celebrated Mass in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez city on the border with the US.

He climbed a ramp overlooking the Rio Grande that separates the city and El Paso, Texas, and laid flowers on a cross erected in memory of migrants who died trying to cross to the other side.

Earlier, he met inmates in the jail of Ciudad Juarez that was once one of the most violent cities in Mexico.

The events concluded his five-day trip.

‘We cannot deny the humanitarian crisis which in recent years has meant the migration of thousands of people,’ the pontiff told some 300,000 people who attended the open-air Mass, reports the BBC.

On the US side, tens of thousands watched the event on a giant screen.

‘Each step, a journey laden with injustices; the enslaved, the imprisoned and extorted; so many of these brothers and sisters of ours are the consequence of trafficking in human beings,’ Pope Francis said.

Earlier on Wednesday, the pontiff visited the Cereso jail, a mixed prison which houses about 700 inmates, 250 of them women.

BDST: 1241 HRS, FEB 18, 2016
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