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…