Archbishop of Mexico City, Angered by Accusations of Wrongdoing in Pederast Priest Case, Calls Journalists " Prostitutes," Cancels Weekly Press Conferences
California Catholic Daily
December 26, 2007
http://calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=590e319d-cc08-44dd-893e-653d945d4da7
The cardinal archbishop of Mexico City has indefinitely postponed his weekly meetings with the press, usually held following Sunday Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral, after he rebuked members of the news media for what the archbishop says is a deliberate and unjustified campaign to defame him.
 |
"There are people out there who kill the good name and dignity of other persons," Cardinal Norberto Rivera told 1,500 inmates during a Dec. 18 visit to Mexico City's main female penitentiary. He called such persons "male and female communication prostitutes."
"There are people outside who say, 'I'm not a sinner,' 'I don't kill,' 'I don't steal' -- but ah, how many other worse things they do," Cardinal Rivera told the inmates. "They don't kill the body, but they are like snakes that kill the good name of others. And they don't care if their victims are innocent. They judge, they sentence and they condemn without any consideration but their own political benefit. For them, there is no justice other than what they themselves dictate."
The influential Rivera leads the biggest archdiocese in all of Mexico, with nine auxiliary bishops and more than 15 million faithful. His comments made national news. He was referring to a more than year-long campaign by national circulation newspapers, particularly the radical leftist daily La Jornada, which has accused Cardinal Rivera of protecting a homosexual and pederast priest when Rivera was Bishop of Tehuacán in the early 1980s.
On Oct. 16, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle decided he lacked jurisdiction in a civil case accusing Cardinal Rivera of conspiring with Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles to protect the child-molesting priest Father Nicolás Aguilar.
Joaquín Aguilar Méndez, 26, represented by lawyers from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), accused Rivera of protecting Aguilar after the priest allegedly abused the young man in 1994. But Aguilar was not under Rivera's jurisdiction in 1994 and was not yet the Archbishop of Mexico City, but was serving as Bishop of Tehuacán. In fact, then-Bishop Rivera had suspended Aguilar from his priestly ministry in 1985 after he learned of a homosexual incident between Aguilar and several teens in that diocese.
Nevertheless, La Jornada (particularly reporter Sanjuana Martínez) has published hundreds of articles accusing Cardinal Rivera of wrongdoing in the Aguilar case, articles which have been used by small but very militant leftist groups to attack Rivera's character.
Such attacks in the press are believed to have played a role in the Nov. 18 invasion of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City, when a mob of more than 150 people stormed into the cathedral during Mass, attacked the faithful, and chanted "pederast protector" and other anti-Rivera slogans. The intrusion forced ecclesiastical authorities to close the cathedral for a week until the municipal government – run by a political party sympathetic to those who stormed the cathedral – promised to guarantee the security of the faithful.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.