ROME (AP) — Cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini is taking the same spirit to his first conclave that's guided his decades-long front-line ministry among the migrants, poor and Indigenous people in Guatemala’s highlands — ensuring that the Gospel isn’t preached “in the abstract.”

Guatemalan Cardinal Alvaro Ramazzini speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at the headquarters of the Scalabrinian congregation, in Rome, Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Advocating for migrants was a priority of Pope Francis, who made Ramazzini a cardinal in 2019. Being elevated to the top hierarchy of the Catholic Church didn’t faze the bishop of Huehuetenango, whose continued commitment to social justice led to many threats of violence. His native Guatemala is struggling through political turmoil and remains a hot spot of migration to the United States.

“It’s a duty of conscience for the cardinals, now that we have the responsibility to name a new pope, that we don’t lose sight that we’ve been coming along a path and this path needs to continue to grow and grow and grow,” Ramazzini told The Associated Press on Saturday, four days before Catholic cardinals gather to elect Francis’ successor. “I’m talking about supporting, welcoming, and protecting the rights of migrants.”

Ramazzini said the church has to advocate for migrants forced by dire poverty to migrate along cartel-controlled routes where they’re often extorted or trafficked, both by helping them with shelters and other humanitarian aid and by lobbying for comprehensive immigration reform.

“But this we haven't achieved,” Ramazzini said. “We didn’t achieve it with Clinton, we didn’t achieve with Obama, we didn’t achieve it with Biden, and far, far less will we succeed with Mr. Trump.”

Still, the church shouldn’t abandon migrants or the “pastoral line” of advocating for social justice, peace and fairer economic relations between countries that started gaining prominence with the Second Vatican Council and reached new heights under Francis, Ramazzini said.

“There’s a line of continuity and I am sure that this will be a task for the next pope,” the cardinal said in the hilltop headquarters of the Scalabrinians, a missionary order founded by an Italian bishop in the late 19th century to serve migrants and refugees. “We need to be the voice of all these people who don’t have access oftentimes to lobbies that we can reach."

For most of the 50-plus years since his ordination, Ramazzini has been bishop in San Marcos and then Huehuetenango, mountainous regions that were particularly hard-hit during Guatemala’s civil war, which ended in 1996. Today, they continue to struggle with extreme poverty and drug-trafficking, pushing hundreds of thousands of local youths to migrate to the United States.

Cardinals are sworn to secrecy about the ongoing deliberations regarding the direction of the church as they prepare to enter the conclave on Wednesday. But Ramazzini said he’s heartened by the “global vision” shared by the unusually large number of cardinals electors — 133, all but a couple of whom are already in Rome.

He added that he trusts the next pope will pick up the pending task of reforming church institutions and its financial structure that Francis began, as well as continue the “great sign” of including more women in positions of leadership.

Ramazzini also highlighted that spirituality and social justice action must go hand-in-hand.

“This is the true spirituality, which is fed by prayer, by reflection on the word of God, but that has to be projected toward the other,” he said. “The next pope will have his own spirituality. But the important thing is that nobody forgets that you can’t have real spirituality without putting the Gospel concretely into practice.”

And his own beliefs are keeping him from being nervous about participating for the first time in the election of the next leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

“I’m not worried because I know that nothing will happen that our Lord Jesus Christ won’t permit,” Ramazzini said. “In the end, he’s the master of the church, we are his servants. … So he will help us come out of this well.”

That's reassuring — as is the certainty that he won’t be picked, Ramazzini joked.