Thousands Honor Slain Cardinal : Mexico: Mourners decry drug violence, official impotence.

Tens of thousands of mourners filed into this city’s metropolitan cathedral Tuesday to pay final tribute to a Roman Catholic cardinal who died in what officials say was a shootout between rival drug traffickers.

Nuns and schoolchildren, poor men in straw hats and society women clutching rosary beads waited in lines that stretched for blocks to view Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo’s open casket. In the afternoon heat, they vented their anger against increasing Mafia violence.

“The facility with which these people take a life fills us with indignation,” said Antonio Hermosillo, 60, who took a day off from his postal job to attend Mass for the cardinal.

“We await justice from the government and mercy from God,” added housewife Blanca Estela Soto, 50.

In Los Angeles, the office of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, a close friend of Posadas, said Tuesday that he is canceling a trip to Rome to meet with the Pope this week. Instead, Mahony will fly to Guadalajara today for Posadas’ funeral.

The 66-year-old Posadas and six other people were shot dead in a hail of automatic gunfire Monday at the international airport in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city. The killings were the latest in a wave of Colombia-style drug violence that began last year.

Mexican state officials said the shootout appears to have involved the narcotics trafficking organizations of Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman, who moves between Sinaloa and Jalisco states, and the Arellano Felix family of Tijuana.

The two groups have been fighting for control of cocaine and marijuana shipping through western Mexico and along the western end of the U.S.-Mexico border.

One of two suspects detained after Monday’s airport shootout allegedly is a member of Guzman’s organization, according to longtime Guadalajara journalists. He reportedly led police to two safehouses loaded with arms caches and several armored vehicles Tuesday.

Among the seven victims of the shooting were an unidentified man who carried federal judicial police identification and a driver for the mayor of Arandas in Jalisco state who carried a military letter of recommendation.

Federal officials rushed to exonerate police of any involvement in the deaths.

“This was a shootout between two rival bands of drug traffickers,” said a source close to the investigation. “There was no police participation.”

But Jorge Zepeda Paterson, the editor of Guadalajara’s Siglo 21 newspaper, said: “We really don’t know if there was police involvement or not. If there was, was it an official operation or unofficial?”

The cardinal’s car was hit with more than 30 shots from an AK-47 automatic rifle, and his body took at least 11 bullets.

Jalisco Atty. Gen. Leobardo Larios Guzman told reporters late Tuesday that the cardinal may have been mistaken for a trafficker during the shooting.

He said police confiscated an arsenal of fragmentation grenades, AK-47s, M-16s and other assault rifles from the scene.

Gov. Carlos Rivera Aceves told reporters that he would establish a commission to seek the death penalty for crimes such as the cardinal’s slaying. There is no death penalty in Mexico; the maximum sentence is 30 years in jail.

Throughout the day, residents and business leaders expressed rage at the government’s failure to rein in traffickers.

“The government says a lot, but they don’t do anything,” said Jesus Ramirez, 67, a farmer who rode the bus from Guanajuato state to pay his respects to the cardinal.

Miller reported from Guadalajara and Darling from Mexico City.