(MEXICO)
Los Ángeles Press [Ciudad de México, Mexico]
April 2, 2024
By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez
It reveals failures of the Apostolic Nunciature to force compliance with the norms of the Catholic Church regarding sexual abuse.
Religion and public life: It is inevitable to assume that bishops prefer litigation, where they believe they have an advantage over victims of sexual abuse instead of developing a culture of prevention.
Despite reaching a peak back in 2020, the number of Roman Catholic dioceses willing to set up a commission to prevent sexual abuse, the total number of said areas remains at 44 since 2021 when the archdiocese of Morelia, capital of the state of Michoacán, set its commission. No commission has been established in any diocese since then.
This is a summary of a longer piece published previously in Spanish by Los Ángeles Press. It avoids some references to the initial stages of the sexual abuse crisis that would be repetitive for the English-speaking reader familiar with the responses in the United States and other English-speaking countries to the ongoing sexual abuse crisis. This version also avoids specific details as the number of clerics, as compared to the overall number of members in the commissions that have published the names of their members. That data is available in the Spanish-speaking version of this piece.
The graph that appears after this paragraph summarizes the data available by the end of March 2024. As can be seen in such graph, after an early start in 2015, and the more intense years of 2019 and 2020, the last of these commissions was created in 2021.
In Mexico, setting up these commissions emerged as a response to the clergy sexual abuse crisis by November 2016. In the early days of that month, the Mexican Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops, the equivalent of the USCCB in the United States, the so-called CEM, held a seminary of sorts on responses to the sexual abuse crisis.
Leading the seminary were Cardinal Seán O’Malley, archbishop of Boston, and who presides in Rome over the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, also known as Tutela or Tutela Minorum after its name in Latin name. He came to Mexico City with Joseph Scicluna, the archbishop of Malta, who has led some of the Church’s internal probes on abuse, and the German Jesuit priest Hans Zollner who, at the time, was seen as secretary of Tutela, although later it has been made clear that he never held such title.
Tutela itself was a then recent creation of Pope Francis. He set it up on March 22nd, 2014. As such, it was born 30 years after the start of what is, by now, the 40th year of the crisis of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Despite the expectations raised by O’Malley’s, Scicluna’s, and Zollner’s visit to Mexico City, the development of what the Mexican bishops called “the National Council for the Protection of Minors” has been stagnant since 2021.
The two documents signaling the commitment of the Mexican CEM are from June 11th, 2018, and from February 12th, 2019. Both are statements issued by the then leaders at CEM. The first one, appearing as an image immediately after this paragraph, was signed by the then chair of CEM, Cardinal José Francisco Robles Ortega. He is the current archbishop of Guadalajara, the second largest Mexican metropolitan area, and the diocese with the largest number of candidates to priesthood in its seminary in the Western hemisphere. One can see also the signature of then general secretary of CEM, the auxiliary bishop of Monterrey, Alfonso Miranda Guardiola.
The second of such documents, appearing as an image immediately after this paragraph, has only the signature of Miranda Guardiola. (see original article)
Both documents are remarkably similar. One must pay close attention not to confuse them, since the narrative is basically the same and there has been no change since the last commission, that of the archdiocese of Morelia, was created in 2021.
Both are in the volumes of the so-called Collective Documents of CEM corresponding to each of those years, which are available at this page.
What matters is that, for practical purposes, there are in Mexico 96 dioceses. Three other dioceses exist for religious and ethnical minorities within Mexican Catholicism that are not relevant for the analysis.
CEM leadership claims in both documents from 2018 and 2019, that they have set up a total of 46 diocesan commissions, so it can be assumed that, even if the last of the known diocesan commissions was created in 2021, there has been no change as far as these diocesan entities is concerned for the last five years or so.
Those entities are the ones that appear on the page of the so-called “National Council for the Protection of Minors” of CEM. However, and although in previous installments of this series that number was reported as valid, the reality is that on that page it is only possible to find image files, PDF files, or links to the pages of 44 dioceses, in addition to one religious order, the so-called Marist Brothers.
There is no explanation as to why all the other Roman Catholic dioceses in Mexico have no commission or if they are in the process of setting up such commission of if they have decided, for whatever reason, that they are simply going to avoid the process of setting up a commission.
The Reasons
It is possible that the stagnation was due to reasons of political calculation within CEM and the Mexican Catholic Church at large. Another possibility is that the political calculation had to do, instead, with developments in Mexican politics, or perhaps a combination of both factors.
As far as the inner politics of the Catholic Church in Mexico, the development of these commissions coincides with the presence in Mexico of Franco Coppola as apostolic nuncio here. He held the position from July 2016 to November 2021. The following month, Pope Francisc appointed him nuncio to Belgium, Luxembourg, and the European Union structures and committees that have their headquarters in those countries.
Unfortunately, naming his replacement took Rome more than six months, so the Maltese archbishop Joseph Spiteri arrived in Mexico until July 2022. Although Spiteri came here after spending time as nuncio in Lebanon, there is no evidence of him following on his predecessor’s footsteps as far as making the establishment of these commissions a priority of his tenure in Mexico City.
CEM itself experienced in November 2021, while Coppola was leaving Mexico, an internal shakeup that removed the auxiliary bishop of Monterrey Alfonso Miranda Guardiola from the general secretariat of the conference.
The position held by Miranda Guardiola from 2016 to 2021, which is when all the existing commissions were established, was occupied by Ramón Castro. He is the current bishop of Cuernavaca, capital of the South-Central state of Morelos.
Although Castro has not been accused of covering up sexual abuse in the dioceses where he has served (Campeche, 2006-13 and Cuernavaca, from 2013 until now), he has made decisions that raise doubts regarding his interest in addressing the abuse crisis.
It is not possible to review his tenure as bishop of Campeche, suffice to say at this point that said tenure coincided with conflicts in said diocese and sizeable losses in the Catholic flock as documented by both the Mexican national censuses of 2000, 2010, and 2020. Campeche has the dubious honor of being one the Mexican states that is losing Catholics at a faster rate than the rest of the country.
Castro’s tenure at Cuernavaca, less than 90 kilometers or sixty miles South of Mexico City, has been marred by bad choices. Most notably, he appointed a priest from Chihuahua as leader of the Deacons of the diocese. Said priest, Fernando Moriel Guerrero, was the protagonist of a scandal in the Archdiocese of Chihuahua in the early years of these century. His story was prominent in a previous installment of this series that only exists in Spanish, linked immediately after this paragraph.
The fact that not one single diocese has set up a commission since Spiteri and Castro are in their current positions makes unavoidable to raise questions regarding the role of both leaders of the Catholic Church and whether or not the lack of any new diocesan commission since 2021 is just an unfortunate coincidence or it is part of an agreement between Castro, the general secretary of CEM and the nuncio Spiteri.
Those who explain the stagnation in the process of setting up diocesan commissions to prevent abuse as tied to the political climate in Mexico, estimate that the interest that some leaders of the Mexican bishops had in creating diocesan commissions was the byproduct of their fear to a potential change in Mexican law.
Back in 2018, the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president shook Mexico. He won the election on a plethora of promises of quick improvements to Mexican laws. Said promises were more realistic since he came to power with solid majorities in both houses of the Mexican Congress.
As part of the wave electing López Obrador, the state of Zacatecas, in Northern Central Mexico, elected Senator Soledad Luévano Cantú. She debuted as senator with a bill that included slight changes in Mexican legislation regarding State-Church relations.
One of said changes sought to require that all churches or “religious associations” as the Mexican constitution defines them, to immediately report the authorities of cases of sexual abuse.
The bill died a sudden death after President López Obrador disqualified it as a violation of one of the sacred cows of Mexican political mythology, the so-called “secular State.”
This was done even though the reform proposed improvements in various aspects of that “secular State”, as can be seen in the bill, available here.
“The secular state”
More surprising was that those who usually express deep disagreements with López Obrador, denounced the bill without paying attention to the proposed change in section 12 bis of the current law regulating the relations between the Mexican authorities and the so-called “religious associations”.
The proposal would not fully correct the problem of the Mexican law about reports of sexual abuse. As it is the case in other Latin American countries, the Mexican law is “imperfect.” An “imperfect” law in Mexican jargoon, is a law setting up duties but that does not state what happens if said duties are not fulfilled.
It was enough for the Senate to convene a forum where those of us who have followed these issues could stress the need to correct the “imperfect” nature of the law. Instead of that, López Obrador killed Senator Luévano’s bill without any consideration for that and other changes.
Surprisingly enough the sudden death of Senator Luévano’s reform project was celebrated across the political spectrum.
On the one hand, there were other senators from Morena, such as Héctor Vasconcelos from Oaxaca, who, imitating López Obrador, render himself as the defender of “secular State” as if his fellow Senator from Zacatecas had proposed turning Mexico into a theocracy.
On the other side, close on this repudiation of Senator Luévano’s bill were Catholic hierarchs willing to defend a staunch separation of Church and State, so separated that the State was giving up any duty to oversee the Church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse. That was the case of the primate archbishop of Mexico, current Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes.
Even worse was the way in which The Associated Press published a cable, reproduced by some U.S. newspapers, in which the author replicated what was said by López Obrador without the slightest hint of criticism or analysis to the implications of killing Senator Luévano’s proposal.
The reasons why López Obrador killed Luévano’s bill, when he had almost absolute control of both houses of the Mexican Congress, are only known to him and those closest to him, but it is clear that in doing so him and his coalition wasted an opportunity to address a key issue.
The outcome was that, once the Luévano’s bill was dead, there was no pressure on CEM to improve prevention of clergy sexual abuse.
Impulses
In any case, the combination of internal and external factors of the Catholic Church combined, so after 2021, there has been no new diocesan commission to prevent abuses in the Mexican Roman Catholic Church.
As much as I would like to find a pattern to explain what happened, I am unable to do so. Some dioceses in the most marginalized regions of rural Mexico, like that of Tlapa in the Southern state of Guerrero or El Salto in the Northern state of Durango were willing to go through the process of setting up a commission to prevent clergy sexual abuse.
At the same time, far more affluent archdioceses, in urban areas, where it would be easy to create a commission, such as that of the city of Chihuahua or that of Acapulco decided to avoid the “pain” of doing so.
I am unable at this point to translate all the tables that appear in the Spanish-speaking version of this story, so if you speak Spanish and are interested in looking at the detail of what dioceses created a commission and what others decided against such measure, you can read the original of this story here at Los Ángeles Press.
I would like to stress, however, some positive and negative developments that I was able to find while going over the documents published by the dioceses that decided to create a commission to prevent sexual abuse in their territories.
The best examples in both senses come from what I have called in the Spanish-speaking version of this story the “Northeastern region” of Mexico. This region encompasses the states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and San Luis Potosí.
One positive development was the earlier response by the Archdiocese of Monterrey. Said entity was the very first to set up its commission back in 2015, with what were at the time an experimental framework. The fact that the then secretary general of the Mexican Episcopate was an auxiliary bishop of Monterrey helped.
Other positive development comes from the diocese of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, which is the sister city of Brownsville, Texas. Both share the margins of the Rio Grande or Río Bravo, depending on whether you look at a U.S. or a Mexican map.
Although Matamoros does not publish the names of the members of its commission it provides a good example of transparency since it published all the bylaws of the Diocesan Commission. Publishing such bylaws allows for a better understanding of the legal reasoning, in this case Church law reasoning, followed by the Mexican bishops who decided to create their commissions.
The documents of the diocese of Matamoros also allow us to observe that, when they decide to comply with what is expected from them, the bishops address some of the issues. Unfortunately, it was not possible to know the names of the members of the commission created in 2018 by Eugenio Lira Rugarcía who, before being bishop of Matamoros, had been auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Puebla and served for some time as general secretary at CEM, from where he had some role in organizing Pope Francis’s 2016 visit to Mexico.
In another sense, in the same region of Mexico, there is the case of the diocese of Saltillo, in the capital of the state of Coahuila. That is the only case of a commission to prevent abuses that, in addition to the usual members of these commissions, clerics or lay people close to the Catholic Church, includes a female official from the Attorney General’s Office of that state.
When Raúl Vera resigned from his position as head of that diocese I thought that such design was going to disappear. Fortunately, I was wrong. Although the new bishop, Hilario González García, joined the commission, he did not add any other cleric to the commission and kept the official from the state prosecutor’s office.
That a member of the commission is, at the same time, a layperson, a woman, and an official at the Attorney General’s Office of that state, means that her participation breaks with the clericalism with which the Catholic hierarchy in Mexico and Latin America approaches these issues. It also solves the issue of notifying the authority of potential cases of clergy sexual abuse in that entity of the Catholic Church.
Sadly, in that same region of Mexico, there is the diocese of Ciudad Valles, in San Luis Potosí, or in other region, the diocese of the city and port of Veracruz, located on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.
Both dioceses, Ciudad Valles and Veracruz, set up commission whose members are, all of them, male clerics. My expectation is that said commissions are set up for failure from the get-go, since they are as biased as they could be to try to figure out ways to prevent clergy sexual abuse in their territories.
In any case, the fact that even within this specific region, encompassing four states and twelve dioceses there is so much variation allows to perceive how wide are the margins of autonomy shaping the response of each bishop and his diocese.
Worst-case scenarios
This is even more relevant when one considers that within this region the archdiocese of San Luis Potosí, one of the worst-case scenarios of the sexual abuse crisis in Mexico, with cases dating back to the late 1980s, lacks any such commission to prevent sexual abuse.
Sadly, the same can be said in other regions and dioceses. It is the case of Tehuacán, in the central state of Puebla. In the early years of this century, Tehuacán became famous in California because of Nicolás Aguilar, a Mexican predator priest sent to the archdiocese of Los Angeles, by the former bishop of that diocese, and current emeritus archbishop of Mexico City, Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera.
Rivera Carrera became synonymous in Mexico with the so-called “geographical solution” to the issue of clergy sexual abuse, on top of attacking journalists who were “guilty” of asking questions back in the 1990s about Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ.
One last issue worth mentioning when dealing with the commissions to prevent clergy sexual abuse in Mexico dioceses is that of the role played by laypersons only in name.
There are lay persons who are only so in appearance. This is the case of the members of the so-called Opus Dei, the members of the so-called Regnum Christi, an auxiliary organization to Maciel’s Legion of Christ, and those associated to the Peruvian Sodalitium of Christian Life.
In that sense, regardless of what the profiles broadcasting the establishment of these commissions say, it is necessary to be aware of who appear as lay persons in these commissions.
This was very evident in the case of the commission created by Carlos Aguiar Retes, when he arrived at Mexico City. Aguiar appointed María Guadalupe Esponda as a member of the commission at the archdiocese.
At the time, back in 2019, she was a full-time member of the Spanish “personal prelature”, a religious order of sorts, known as the Opus Dei. As a numerary, it would be hard for me to think of her as a layperson. Numeraries, supernumeraries, and other “lay” members of Opus Dei, Regnum Christi, the Peruvian Sodalitium of Christian Life, and other Catholic “orders” are laypersons only on paper. They are more clericalized than clerics themselves.
As I pointed out with the Colombian Ilva Hoyos in the previous installment of this series, on the activities of the Latin American branch of Tutela, the so-called Cepromelat, although they render themselves as lay persons, they have such close ties with the structures linked to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that it is practically impossible to differentiate them from clerics who openly recognize themselves as such.
It is necessary to have a very specific knowledge of the religious field in each diocese to know who are the lay persons appointed to these entities, to figure out if they are lay only in name or if they must be considered a special type of lay person, one who will put their commitments and loyalties with the hierarchy of the Church before any other consideration.
Sadly, this is where we are in the crisis of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Even if one wants to trust the good will of Pope Francis, the sad reality is that priests continue to cover up each other, and many bishops are complicit in that attitude.
The fact that less than half the Mexican Catholic dioceses have set up a commission to prevent abuses is a sad reminder of that reality. More so when one sees how, despite Pope Francis’s preaching on the “spirituality of reparation” or the multiple calls of Cardinal O’Malley and other senior Vatican officials, including current and former members of the Tutela Minorum, Mexican bishops and other senior clergy still bet for litigation and confrontation with the victims even in social media.
More so since, as the global media frequently reminds these days, we are at the end of Pope Francis’s pontificate. French newspaper Le Figaro published last Sunday a story talking already about such end.
The problem is that if anything is known about the history of the Catholic Church is that it follows a motion like a pendulum. So, periods marked by some change, are followed by strong movements in the logic of the most irrational restoration, as were the cases of John Paul II and his successor Benedict XVI, in response to the timid changes promoted by John XXIII and Paul VI.
The few changes, more in tone and form than in substance, which occurred during Bergoglio’s rule, run the risk of being eradicated if the extreme right can control the conclave that, inevitably, will occur soon.
The Mexican case is worse because the so-called “secular State” is a fiction that has only served to delay any solution to the issue of clergy sexual abuse.
Creating “safe environments” was the goal of the commissions that 44 Catholic dioceses in Mexico have created. That they are only 44, demonstrates how far we are in Mexico from reaching a solution to this issue.