Catholic Church Edging Back Onto Political Stage in Mexico

As they have for centuries, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans made their annual pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe earlier this month, paying homage to their patron with painful penance and Indian dances.

Women wrapped in shawls crawled on their knees across the vast stone plaza of the church, and men danced in the masks and plumed headdresses handed down through generations.

Although these rituals, half-Catholic, half-pagan, were carried out as they have been for the last 400 years, Cardinal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada told worshipers that this year’s celebration was “like no other, because of the events of the last year.”

More political than religious, the events to which Corripio referred have meant a year of dramatic change for the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, which has no legal standing in the country, despite having 70 million followers among a population estimated at 82 million.

Earlier this month, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari shocked many of his compatriots by inviting Corripio and five other priests to his inauguration in the federal Chamber of Deputies. It was the first time in 60 years that clergy attended an inauguration, and irate opposition members of the National Congress charged that the presence of priests in their chamber violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

Salinas set off further fireworks when, during his inaugural address, he promised to “modernize” the relationship between the church and the Mexican government. His interior secretary then boldly announced, “The church exists.” It was a proclamation that one magazine described as “three big words no Mexican government this century had dared to say in public.”

The Catholic Church, politically powerful here in the time of Spanish rule, opposed Mexican independence and later the revolution against dictator Porfirio Diaz. After the revolution, the constitution of 1917 took away the church’s legal recognition, prohibited priests and nuns from voting or wearing their cloth in public and banned parochial schools.

In 1926, the president of Mexico, Gen. Plutarco Elias Calles, decided to enforce the constitution. He closed church schools and monasteries, deported foreign priests and nuns and told Mexican clergy that they must register with the government to perform their rites.

The church retaliated by going on strike for three years, and bands of conservative Catholic peasants, apparently led by priests, took up arms against the government. The religious rebels, known as Cristeros, burned government buildings, dynamited a passenger train and killed officials. The army, in turn, burned churches and hanged priests, shot some Cristeros and rounded up others in concentration camps.

A detente was reached in the 1930s, but church-state relations have remained uneasy, and the issue continues to raise heated emotions on both sides.

“Those who oppose relations are Jacobins, little groups who live in the 19th Century,” said Msgr. Genaro Alamilla, a spokesman for the Mexican Bishops Conference. “We are the ones living in modernity. . . . We are 70 million Catholics. I challenge those (opposition) deputies to tell me how many millions of Mexicans they represent.”

Although the constitution remains unchanged, in fact, the church has parochial schools and priests do appear in public wearing their clerical collars. In recent years, the government and church leaders have held secret talks to improve relations.

But now church leaders want the talks public. Alamilla said the church seeks a constitutional amendment to give it legal recognition, legal primary and secondary schools and access to mass media--all rights enjoyed by the church in other Latin American countries.

Opponents of a constitutional amendment say the church simply wants to regain political power.

“Here in Mexico, the church has always acted against the interests of national independence,” said Alfredo Reyes, a leftist legislator. “They tried to prevent the development of the state.”

Reyes added with irritation, “The church should dedicate itself to its spiritual labor of winning souls for heaven and leave the political struggle to the political parties.”

Soledad Loaeza, an authority on the church at the post-graduate Colegio de Mexico, added that during the Cold War of the 1950s, anti-communism was promoted more vigorously by the Catholic Church in Mexico than by the United States.

“There is a re-accommodation of political forces in Mexico, and the church is trying to insert itself into this process,” Loaeza said, referring to eroding support for the official party and the emergence of a newly powerful left.

The intense church-state debate follows by just three months another breakthrough for the Catholic Church. In September, Pope John Paul II beatified a controversial Mexican priest named Miguel Agustin Pro, making him the country’s first candidate for sainthood in modern times.

Father Pro, a 36-year-old Jesuit from the state of Zacatecas, was shot to death by an army firing squad in 1927 for his alleged involvement in an assassination attempt against former President Alvaro Obregon. Pro’s brother had owned a car used in the getaway.

President Calles issued the order to execute Pro, although the priest, who declared his innocence, was not granted a trial. His beatification, therefore, was seen here as a swipe at the Mexican state.

Church officials were careful not to gloat over what they felt was Father Pro’s just deserts. But buoyed by their success, they now are seeking recognition for Juan Diego, the peasant to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe is said to have appeared 457 years ago, asking that a church be built in her honor.

It is that shrine that hundreds of thousands of Mexicans visit each December, regardless of the political winds blowing around their church.