ROME — Pope Francis wrote a letter to a group of mostly South American migrants Thursday, calling them “the suffering flesh of Christ.”

The pontiff told the 3,000 migrants gathered at Lajas Blancas in Panama en route to the United States that he would like to be there with them personally but instead was represented by a group of bishops from Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia as well as Catholic pastoral workers.

The migrants arrive in Lajas Blancas after crossing the Darien Gap, a dense tropical forest covering over 1,400,000 acres along the border between Panama and Colombia and one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the Americas.

According to the United Nations, more than 500,000 migrants crossed the Darien Gap in 2023, the highest annual figure recorded to date.

File/Migrants, most from Haiti, ford one of many rivers they will cross while on a trek through the infamous Darien Gap on their journey towards the United States on October 07, 2021 near Acandi, Colombia. ( John Moore/Getty Images)

The migrants crossing the gap represent about a hundred different nationalities from different continents, mostly from Venezuela, Ecuador, and Haiti, but also from China and other nations, said Commissioner Reinel Serrano from the Panamanian National Border Service. There are also significant numbers of Colombians and Nicaraguans making the crossing.

“I am also the son of migrants who left in search of a better future,” Pope Francis wrote Thursday. “There were times when they were left with nothing, until they went hungry; empty-handed, but full of hope.”

“They are the face of a mother Church that marches with her sons and daughters, in whom she discovers the face of Christ and, like Veronica, with affection, offers relief and hope in the Viacrucis [Way of the Cross] of migration,” he declared.

Our migrant brothers and sisters “represent the suffering flesh of Christ,” he said, “when they are forced to leave their land, to face the risks and tribulations of a hard road, to find no other way out.”

The pope also urged the migrants to “never forget your human dignity” and to not be afraid “to look others in the eye because you are not rubbish but are also part of the human family and the family of God’s children.”

“And thank you for being there,” he said.