Pope Francis has expressed his sadness at the news that 27 people were killed and hundreds injured when a lorry ploughed a religious procession in Mexico on Wednesday.
In a telegram to Sigifredo Noriega Barceló, the Bishop of Zacatecas, the north-central Mexican state where the accident took place, the Pope offered his condolences to the families of the dead, and wished a speedy recovery to those injured.
Four children, aged between one and five years, were among those killed when a lorry crashed into a procession bound for the eighteenth-century church of San Gregorio Magno last Wednesday afternoon.
According to the Vatican's news service, the lorry had defective brakes. The driver, who jumped from the lorry before it hit the procession, has not been found.
The procession was part of a week-long celebration of a local sixteenth-century saint.