Pope to Meet Russian Patriarch in Cuba; Deadly Riot at Overcrowded Mexican Prison
VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. Live pictures there from Rome. Just coming up to 7:30 on a Friday morning and waiting for the Pope's plane to take off because he is on a historic trip to Latin America right now. He will spend the next five days in Mexico. That's starting on Friday night. But before getting there, the pope will stop in Cuba to meet the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the first such meeting ever, and the Vatican has worked for the past few decades trying to mend ties with other churches since they split nearly a thousand years ago. And in Mexico, which has the second-largest Catholic population in the world, the pope would like to talk about immigration. That's a contentious issue during this U.S. presidential race. Pope Francis will also visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Senior Vatican analyst, John Allen, joins us now from Denver, Colorado. We're also going to keep a close eye on that airport in Rome for the pope's plane, which I believe has a call sign of Shepherd One. So, John, this meeting at Havana's airport between the pope and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, before we get to the significance of that, just the logistics, why are they meeting there? It seems kind of an odd place, doesn't it?</s>JOHN ALLEN, CNN SENIOR VATICAN ANALYST: Well, there are a relatively few news story that one can say a millennium in the making. This is the closest we'll ever see. Of course, the split between eastern and western Christianity goes all the way back to 1054. In terms of why Havana, it is one part dumb luck and one part design. But the dumb luck is that Patriarch Kirill, of the Russian Orthodox Church, was already scheduled for a trip to Cuba when it was announced that Pope Francis was going to be going to Mexico, which meant, logistically, it was feasible for the two to intersect in Havana. The design part is that, as you indicated, there has been work to try to make a meeting like this possible for decades. And part of the ballet here was you could really do it Rome because that was like a win for the pope. You couldn't really do in Moscow because that would look like a win for the patriarch. You had to come up with some neutral site. And because the relationship between Catholics and Orthodox has been so weighted down by European history, doing it outside of the West in some neutral venue made a great deal of sense. So for both of those reasons that's why they're meeting at the airport departure lounge there at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana.</s>VAUSE: So 1000 years in the making. Clearly, they'll have a lot to talk about, you'd imagine. But they're talking about this communique, this declaration, this joint declaration. What exactly is that all about?</s>ALLEN: Look, part of that is going to be focused on the past. There is, of course, a lot of bad blood on both sides of this relationship. The Russian Orthodox have many resentments over what they perceive to be Rome's imperial ambitions in the Christian world. Catholics are sometimes criticized. Some of the Russian recalcitrants to engage in inimical relations. But I think, to a great extent, the joint declaration that Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill are likely to sign is probably going to be focused on the present. I mean, let's not forget that both sides, in announcing this historic encounter, pointed above all to the fate of persecuted Christians in the Middle East as one of the urgent issues bringing the two religious leaders together. Both the Catholics and the Russian Orthodox have believers, the faithful on the ground in places such as Iraq, Syria, in what Christians call the Holy Land, that is Israel and the Palestinian territories. And particularly in Iraq and Syria, those Christians are in the firing line these days. They tend to be in the front ranks of the victims of ISIS. Both sides want to mobilize the resources of their two churches to try to be of assistance to those Christians. So I think, in many ways, although the weight of the past will hang over this meeting, I think it's the burden of the present that's really the engine driving the train.</s>VAUSE: And obviously, this is a stopover on the way to Mexico. Once in Mexico, there's a lot of issues for the pope, but he'll also be visiting a prison there, which I found quite interesting. Typical Pope Francis. But these are the things that he does, and it's a dangerous thing to do in Mexico.</s>ALLEN: Yeah, of course. He's going to be visiting a prison basically 48 hours after an appalling riot broke out in a prison in another part of the country, in Monterey, leaving dozens of people dead. And it's a reminder that prison overcrowding, and tensions in those overcrowded prisons, particularly among rival members of drug gangs, is a chronic problem. And in addition, that is merely one of several sorts of issues of social justice we expect Francis to be picking up along his itinerary. You mentioned in the set up to our conversation, certainly something Americans will have their eyes on, on the 17th, when he goes to Ciudad Juarez and walks up to the border between Mexico and the United States. He'll be about 65 yards away, right across the Rio Grande, greeting several hundred immigrants from Mexico, from Central America, who are now in the United States. And obviously, in the context of a highly charged immigration debate amid the presidential primaries in 2016, it's a gesture with clear political significance. But if there's one thing we have learned about Pope Francis over three years, this is not a pope shy about wading into political waters when he thinks there's a moral and humanitarian point to make.</s>VAUSE: Yeah, absolutely. John, thank you. John Allen, our senior Vatican analyst there in Denver. And we are still waiting for the pope to arrive on the tarmac there for this historic meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He's running a little late, but this meeting has taken about a thousand years to put together, so I guess they can wait a little longer. Thanks, John. And more now on the prison riot that John mentioned there in Mexico. It happened at Topo Chico Prison just before midnight on Wednesday in the northeastern part of Monterrey. Family members gathered outside the prison in the overnight hours, desperate to find out if their loved ones were still alive. 49 people killed, dozens injured, five of them seriously. The violence comes just ahead of that visit by Pope Francis. This latest deadly riot appears to be another symptom of an overcrowded prison system rife with corruption where inmates are often the ones who are in charge. Ioan Grillo is a journalist and author of "Gangster Warlords." He specializes in drug trafficking. And he joins us from Mexico City. Ioan, this riot, it seems to reflect the bigger war across Mexico between major drug cartels.</s>IOAN GRILLO, JOURNALIST & AUTHOR: Yeah, when you go to the prisons, you see surreal things. And I've been going to many prisons across Mexico and Latin America, and you see the prisoners control wings completely and divide up among the cartels and gangs. I've even seen people having guns, Uzis and grenades inside prisons. So this fight and this violence is no surprise. What is concerning is when you have the military and police storm in as well, it's hard to know how many of the people were killed by criminals, or how many could have been killed by police or soldiers as they went to quell the situation.</s>VAUSE: So you have a situation in many prisons there in Mexico, where these drug cartel leaders are essentially in charge, and they're mixing with the general prison population, which can also include women?</s>GRILLO: Yeah, and we've seen very crazy and very sad things in this very prison, in fact. There's accusation some female prisoners were being used as sex slaves. But often inside these prisons, you see women going in quite freely. Sometimes the girlfriends and wives of inmates, sometimes prostitutes go into the jails. I've seen a crazy thing in one jail in Mexico where one of the heads of the prisoners was killed and, afterwards, we went into his cell, he had a pool table and a disco sound system in his cell. And he had a big, massive poster on the wall of Al Pacino from "Scarface."</s>VAUSE: So in many ways, the guards and the authorities are not in control day to day of the prison, because, obviously, the prisoners, for the most part, stay inside the jail?</s>GRILLO: The guards are often very terrified. Often the guards are corrupt. They're receiving money. And it's obvious from the things you see in the prisons, prisoners with cell phones, prisoners with guns, prisoners with dogs in some prisons. But the guards are very terrified as well. Imagine a situation where you're a guard in one of these prisons and the prisoners can say to you, if you do not help us, we're going to kill you, or we'll go to your home and kill your whole family. There was a case in a prison in northeastern Mexico where various guards finished their shift and, afterwards, the cartel kidnapped them and murdered them all. So they're living with fear. Corruption isn't a strong enough word for it. It's really capture of these institutions by criminal gangs.</s>VAUSE: Very quickly, last question, last month, after el Chapo, the notorious drug lord, was recaptured, the Mexican president said that the people there, they could trust their security institutions. That would seem to be a bit of a stretch?</s>GRILLO: Absolutely. The recapture of "el Chapo" Guzman was necessary. You can't let a criminal of his caliber be on the street and show that criminals can beat the system. But the security conditions in Mexico are still very rotten. There's still a very long way to go before the people can feel secure in the street that the police can protect them from criminal gunmen.</s>VAUSE: Ioan, thank you for the insight. Good to speak with you.</s>GRILLO: Great to be here.</s>VAUSE: Still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, investors in Asia running for cover again as the stock market rout rolls around the world. Also, Bruce Springsteen, in his own words. For the first time, the boss puts pen to paper, writes his life story. Much more on "Born to Run" when we come back.