Mexican bishops urge collaboration after election of Lopez Obrador

Mexico City, Mexico, Apr 4, 2019 / 02:10 pm (CNA).- Fr. Hugo Valdemar, the canon penitentiary of the Archdiocese of Mexico, said Monday that through Spanish missionaries we have received from Spain “the greatest thing we Mexicans have, the true faith.”

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote last month to Pope Francis and the King of Spain, Felipe VI, asking for an apology for the abuses committed during conquest of Mexico by Spanish Catholics in the 16th century.

Spain dismissed López Obrador’s request, while the Vatican recalled that Pope Francis, as well as his predecessors, have asked forgiveness for the “many and grave sins” committed during the conquest of the Americas.

In his April 1 column at the Mexican publication Contra Réplica, Fr. Valdemar noted that “we cannot fall into an historical Manecheism without doing ourselves profound harm: that the good ones were the original peoples, almost in the state of original grace, and the bad ones were the Spanish conquistadors who came to destroy great cultures.”

“The historic truth is very complex, the truth is that the Spaniards didn’t make the conquest but the indigenous did, the peoples subjugated by the Aztec empire, tired of the cruelty and exploitation they were subjected to.”

“This resulted in entire peoples such as the Tlaxcaltecas joining the handful of 200 Spaniards, along with other subjugated peoples joining together, to make possible what just the Spanish alone could never had done,” he said.

The priest acknowledged that “there is no doubt that there were also excesses in planting the faith, but in reality, the Church and the missionaries were the great protectors of the indigenous peoples.”

“Thanks to them, their dignity as persons was recognized, they were freed from slavery, their culture was protected and above all, thanks to the Spanish Catholic Church the greatest gift came to us, faith in Jesus Christ, the sole savior of men, and Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared, the model and star of evangelization, as John Paul II called her.”

Fr. Valdemar stressed that “it’s of no use to nurse and dwell on the wounds of the past, and the Nobel laureate in literature Octavio Paz has already spoken of the national trauma of not being able to properly integrate our dual origin: indigenous and Spanish.”

“From Spain we received through extraordinary missionaries such as Pedro de Gante, Motolinia, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, and Tata Vasco de Quiroga, the greatest thing we Mexicans have, the true faith, faith in Jesus Christ, and therefore access to eternal salvation, in addition to this very beautiful language we speak, Castilian Spanish, the suppression of the diabolical barbarism of human sacrifices and the darkness of idolatry, access to a superior culture, the occidental, of which we form a part today, and on the other hand we retain many of the values of the indigenous world, hospitality, a strong social sense and a sense of belonging, and the legacy of the monuments they left which today we show with pride to the millions of tourists who visit us.”

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St. Irenaeus of Lyon. / Credit: Wolfymoza via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

CNA Staff, Jun 28, 2024 / 04:00 am (CNA).
On June 28, the Catholic Church celebrates St. Irenaeus of Lyon, who as a boy sat at the feet of Polycarp, eagerly listening to the… […]

Mexico City, Mexico, Jun 29, 2018 / 05:17 pm (ACI Prensa).- Various civil organizations in Mexico, including one dedicated to the philosophy of St. Thomas More, have urged politicians participating in the upcoming general election to re-establish peace and justice in the country.

By signing of the “Pact for Peace,” the organizations stressed that “We educational, social, political and governmental actors must all be united  in order to strengthen the essential conditions for peace: the promotion of ethical, human and social values of respect and peaceful coexistence. The prevention of violence, drugs and crime. Social dialogue and conciliation.”

The signatories include National Parents Union, the Mexican Commission for Human Rights, the Citizen Coordinator, the Fundación Tomás Moro, and the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice.

Mexico’s July 1 general election will determine the country’s president as well as all of the members of the federal legislature. Many regional and local positions will also be voted on.

The Mexican civil organizations also expressed their rejection of campaign promises such as the creation of an “armed civilian guard.”

The signers encouraged “the Armed Forces to remain as long as necessary (performing) domestic security duties to protect citizens,” and at the same time they called for “the prohibition and dissolution of self-defense groups” and “the dismantling of armed organized crime gangs.”

They also asked the winners of the July 1 electoral contest to establish as public policy in the different levels of the government a substantial improvement in “care and assistance for crime victims and their families who are demanding justice and solidarity.”

“We social organizations that are fighting for peace demand from the political actors the commitment to create a social and political climate of peace and to resolve their conflicts without creating chaos, making threats, or encouraging acts of vengeance.”

The civil organizations also urged the authorities who are elected to work with “transparency” against corruption and that they provide “justice against impunity.”

“We ask the president of Mexico to report quarterly to the National Public Safety Council and to make the information public so society can evaluate the results in abating impunity, crime and vioence. And that the Council report on the performance of the public prosecutors, criminal judges and magistrates,” they said.

They then encouraged that there be order in the prisons and at the same time neither “hatred nor amnesty.”

“We urge that the prisons be put in order so they are not schools of criminality, that sentences be served with social work and that their assimilation back into society be effective with the participation of social organizations,” they stated.

The Pact for Peace concluded by urging candidates to accept the results of the July 1 elections and “in the case of disagreements,” that they turn to the board of elections and the other legally competent authorities.

More than 100 politicians have been killed across Mexico ahead of the general election.

On June 21, Ocampo mayoral candidate Fernando Ángeles Juárez was killed by unknown gunmen, the BBC reported. When federal forces arrived to investigate the killing, they were stopped by local police. The entire local police force of the city in Michoacan state has since been detained.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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