MEXICO
Chicago Tribune
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Leon, Mexico— The Roman Catholic Church in Mexico this year took the unusual step of issuing guidelines on how Mexicans should vote in the upcoming presidential election: Candidates should value marriage as a bond between a man and a woman and should place prime importance on “the right to life, starting at conception.”
Both ideas were clearly aimed at leftist parties and others who have backed same-sex marriage and abortion, legalized in recent years in Mexico City.
Pope Benedict XVI arrives Friday to a Mexico that, officially, is a strictly secular nation. And although the Catholic Church has almost always enjoyed a powerful position, it has taken on a particularly activist role in partisan politics during the last decade. …
And in another controversial move, Benedict is not meeting with victims of sexual abuse by priests, something he has done in most other countries he has visited, including the U.S. This comes despite Mexico having been home to one of the church’s most notorious abusers, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel.
Maciel, who the church now says fathered at least three children by two women and sexually, physically and emotionally abused numerous young seminarians and others, was for years protected by the Vatican under the late Pope John Paul II. A Mexican, Maciel founded the Legionaries of Christ, which rose to become one of the most powerful and influential orders in the Roman Catholic Church. Maciel was frequently at John Paul’s side, especially during his many trips to Mexico.
The Catholic hierarchy in Mexico also defended Maciel for many years and has stayed largely silent since his disgrace. For Benedict to meet with abuse victims, the Mexican bishops would have had to formally request the encounter, as their counterparts did in other countries. They made no such request, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said last week.
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