Despite having one of the largest populations of practising Roman Catholics in the world, Mexico’s diplomatic ties with the Vatican are very young. It was only in September 1992 that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari re-established diplomatic relations, which had been formally severed by the Mexican government 125 years previously in 1867. In practice, the break took place even earlier than this, in 1858, after President Benito Juárez nationalised Church property, disbanded religious orders and ordered the separation of Church and State.
The Church backed conservatives during the 1910-1917 Mexican Revolution, and was persecuted by the triumphant revolutionaries. The 1917 constitution placed restrictions on Church activities, such as stripping it of legal status and officially preventing religious institutions from teaching in private schools, which were only lifted in 1992. Some Roman Catholics, including clergy, rose up against these strictures in the 1920s and were brutally crushed, with priests hanged in public squares and churches ransacked.
Although it remains secular, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) has shown a readiness to court local Church leaders in recent years, since Mexican society became more conservative after the right-wing Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) exercised power for 12 years (2000-2012) prior to the presidential victory of Enrique Peña Nieto. Some 84% of Mexicans define themselves as Roman Catholic despite the years of antagonism between the Church and the Mexican Revolution.
While it was Salinas who eventually restored ties with the Vatican, it was President Peña Nieto who became the first head of state representing the PRI ever to attend mass publicly when he took part in the service installing Pope Francis on 19 March 2013. The accession of the first Latin American archbishop to the pontificate looked set to dissipate finally the bitter historical legacy of Church-State conflict in Mexico. Relations with the Church have been strong under Peña Nieto and it is noteworthy that Catholic leaders have attended some of his most important speeches and, indeed, birthday celebrations.
But the misguided papal missive dated 21 February touched a very raw nerve and has strained diplomatic relations. Meade has worked hard to try and alter the foreign perception of Mexico as a country overrun by organised crime and he objected strenuously to the use of the term ‘Mexicanisation’ by the Pope in his email to a friend and legislator for the province of Buenos Aires, Gustavo Vera (see sidebar) which, coming from someone with such a high profile and influence, conspires against this objective.
The Pope was responding to an email from Vera who bewailed the relentless advance of drug-trafficking in Argentina and informed him of various accusations that his NGO, La Alameda, was about to make. The Pope replied by saying that he hoped Argentina responded “in time to avoid Mexicanisation” as he had spoken with Mexican bishops about the “terror” in Mexico. This letter was posted on La Alameda’s website.
Meade summoned the papal nuncio in Mexico, Christopher Pierre, to complain about the “stigmatisation of Mexico” and to relay this message to the Vatican. Meade said the protest note was merely “a mechanism for dialogue” but he seemed very intent on setting the Vatican straight. He said that it would be more fitting for the Vatican “to look for better focuses, dialogue and recognition of Mexico’s huge effort and great commitment to confront drug-trafficking” which, he stressed, was “a shared issue”.
The Pope was on a week-long spiritual retreat at the time of the commotion caused by his email, but it seems his meditations were interrupted. The Mexican ambassador to the Holy See, Mariano Palacios Alcocer, said he had received a letter from the Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, entitled ‘A clarification of the words “avoid Mexicanisation” used by the Pope in a private and informal message’.
Palacios informed the press that Lombardi had stressed that “The term ‘Mexicanisation’ by no means had a stigmatising intent towards the Mexican people and, still less, could be considered a political opinion to the detriment of a nation that is making a serious effort to eradicate violence and the social causes that underpin it.” Lombardi said that the Pope’s sole intent had been to underline the seriousness of drug-trafficking that affects Mexico and other Latin American countries, and that he had never meant to “hurt the feelings of Mexicans or [belittle] the government’s efforts”. Palacios said that the Vatican’s message had also stressed that the Pope had called upon Mexican bishops to cooperate with the government’s programmes to confront some of the social causes of violence in Mexico.
The secretary general of the Mexican bishops’ conference (CEM), Eugenio Lira Rugarcía, however, defended the Pope, saying the pontiff had merely pointed out “the reality that is causing so much pain” in Mexico. Lira Rugarcía, the auxiliary bishop of Puebla, said that the violence engendered by drug-trafficking was “a cancer that sadly invades and goes beyond frontiers”.
It is worth noting that Mexico’s bishops have been far more forthright than the Pope about the violence in the country. On 12 November last year, the CEM issued a pronunciamiento: “Mexican bishops say ‘Enough already! No more blood. No more deaths. No more disappeared. No more pain and shame’.”
The CEM went on to “add our voice to the general outcry for a Mexico in which truth and justice cause a profound transformation of the institutional, judicial and political order to ensure that incidents such as Iguala and Tlatlaya [respectively the abduction and presumed murder of 43 trainee teacher students; and the allegations of army involvement in 22 extrajudicial killings] are never again repeated.” It concluded with “sadness” that the country’s situation “has got worse, triggering a true national crisis”.
While the Pope was remiss to think that his reflections in a private missive would not enter the public arena, the Mexican government would, arguably, have been better served treating them as ‘private’ and ignoring them. Meade’s fiery response exposed the Mexican government’s acute sensitivity, while simultaneously drawing more attention to the problem of violence in Mexico. Ultimately, the Vatican has legitimate concerns. And the Church itself has been profoundly affected by the violence in Mexico. A Roman Catholic priest, Gregorio López Gorostieta, was kidnapped over Christmas in the state of Guerrero and his body found three days later. The remains of a Ugandan priest, John Ssenyondo, were found in a mass grave last November in Guerrero, after his kidnap in April.
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