Secretary General of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference responds to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s remarks about the Catholic Church

The Mexican Bishops’ Conference’s secretary general, Bishop Ramón Castro Castro, reacted on July 9 to recent comments made by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who termed the Catholic Church in Mexico “hypocritical” and encouraged it to fulfil its role, which the bishops are really doing.

“You who have the power of the state, that’s why you exist, it’s your obligation. It’s an essential role of the authorities to provide the country peace and justice,” Castro said, addressing the president of Mexico.

“I believe this is something that the president should reconsider,” the prelate said in reference to the president’s accusations.

“We were accused of being hypocrites and of not having raised our voices during the previous six-year presidential terms,” he continued. “So I promised that we were going to make a list of the main documents where peace is talked about and where criticism is made.”

In reality, the Mexican Bishops’ Conference has released 116 publications since 1968 in which it expresses its concern about the state of Mexico.

The most recent, which was only just released, demanded that July 10 be declared a National Day of Prayer for Peace.

“I think it’s part of our mission. A very powerful moment was the assassination of Cardinal Posadas — the bishops’ conference rose up in protest; [also] the (massacre in the town of) Acteal, and also the problem of corruption in 2004, shameful events for Mexico, the corruption of the authorities ran really deep,” he said.

The Mexican president attacked the priests, bishops, and cardinals who had challenged his organized-crime approach during his morning news conference on June 30.

López Obrador, a candidate for the Mexican presidency in 2018, advocated for a strategy of “abrazos no balazos,” which translates to “hugs not bullets” in English. This strategy lessens the use of force by the military and police while tackling the underlying causes of the drug trade, such as poverty.

In contrast to his predecessors’ “war on drugs,” López Obrador has a different policy. However, violent crime has escalated under his presidency.

“Why didn’t they act in that way when Calderón (was in office)? Why were they silent when the massacres were ordered, when ‘kill them in the act’ was put into practice, when the high command of the army was told: ‘You do your job and we’ll deal with human rights’? Why this hypocrisy?” López Obrador questioned, referring to the policies of previous presidents such as Felipe Calderón.

The Mexican bishops notably denounced, among other things, the 2005 wave of executions, the 2010 killing of migrants in San Fernando, and the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa.

“Here’s the proof that we have never been negligent, that we have done our job as pastors, presenting the truth and pleading for awareness of what is going on and for it to be resolved,” said Castro, who also serves as the bishop of Cuernavaca.