The Church in elections: “The most radical secularism has softened”

In the summer of 2002, Andrés Manuel López Obrador had a fleeting meeting with Pope John Paul II visiting Mexico.

Not knowing very well what to do in a situation like that, the then head of government of the capital consulted the sociologist Roberto Blancarte, an expert in religions and secularism, who recommended a very discreet role that was resolved with a very slight and improvised greeting to the outside the Basilica of Guadalupe.

The youngest of his sons at that time, the chronicles say, gave the pontiff a cape of sheep's wool wrapped in brown paper.

The very Catholic Vicente Fox received the Pole with tears in his eyes and surveys were carried out to find out how the population had accepted the kiss on the ring with which the president prostrated himself before the pontiff.

Mexico was breaking a secular past that established its constitutional principles in the 19th century and was consolidated after the revolution of 1910. Today, the two candidates for the presidency have visited Francis in the Vatican, the bishops of Guerrero have negotiated with the drug violence has cooled down and the Episcopate has successfully called the three candidates in the running for the June presidential elections in search of a political consensus that will bring peace to the country.

What has happened to religion and secularism since those Fox tears until today?

Blancarte believes that the secular is winning, “with some cracks in the public sphere,” that the separation of Church and State imposed by the Juarist liberals in the 1957 Constitution remains “firm” among the population.

Mexico, says the UNAM researcher, continues to be as Catholic as it is anticlerical, even though the president has established himself in this six-year term as “the champion” of moral preaching.

Like “a village priest”, in the words of the sociologist.

Indeed, the polls agree with Blancarte.

The last one carried out by the Catholics for the Right to Decide, in 2021, reveals a country, to say the least, curious.

With a sample in which 92% believe in God, those consulted do not agree that religion should be taught in schools (67%), they support same-sex marriage (60%), they believe that a woman who has had an abortion can continue to be a good believer (65%) and 72% reject that priests or other religious leaders call to vote for one party or another in the elections.

Naturally, the responses of non-believers raise those numbers.

Mexico is a very religious country in general, where 90 million people declare themselves Catholic and the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe on December 12 is the second most popular pilgrimage in the world after the pilgrimage to Mecca, but it has very secular legislation. robust that prevents religion classes in public schools (Salinas de Gortari granted it in private schools), the political demonstration of religious people and the invocation of gods and saints in political campaigns and in the exercise of government.

But Mexico is also a country where laws are tenaciously broken and there are empty schools and closed banks to celebrate the Guadalupe, no matter how much they disguise it with some secular commemoration.

Last October, a PRI initiative in Congress proposed declaring that day a non-working day for “cultural, religious and economic reasons.”

That is, give nature to what is already happening.

“There is a strong connection between populism and popular religiosity and Morena has discovered it and plays with it in an ambiguous way,” explains Blancarte.

How else can we understand that the bishops take to the mountains to dialogue with the drug traffickers or that the candidates attend the call of the Episcopate without the president saying this is my mouth.

The rest of the political spectrum does not have a position against it either, votes are votes.

The National Regeneration Movement, the president's party, self-proclaimed leftist, was founded on December 12 and its acronym, Morena, makes an undoubted nod to the Virgin of Guadalupe, although this, like the flag, belongs to no one, but of everyone.

That said, the biggest mystery in Mexican politics is not who will win the elections, for example, but what religion the President of the Republic professes.

“He is a Christian, without a doubt, I have my sources and he himself has said it, it is the general perception of those of us who dedicate ourselves to this,” says UNAM historian and religion expert Patricia Galeana.

“He is not an evangelical, although he seems so,” Blancarte rejects: “he is Catholic, although with the Mormons he says that he is a Mormon and with Jehovah's Witnesses that he is a witness;

anticlerical, he may be, but Catholic,” says the sociologist, co-author of the book titled

AMLO and religion.

The secular state under threat.

“Definitely Christian, they say he converted after almost drowning in his youth,” maintains fellow expert Pauline Capdevielle, from the UNAM Legal Research Institute.

It is not difficult to imagine López Obrador with a smile if he were to read this text.

Capdevielle also laughs: “It's just a mystery,” she says.

John Paul II visited Mexico for the last time in 2002, he was received by then-president Vicente Fox.

The president has taken scapulars out of his pocket in the middle of a press conference to say that they protected him from covid-19, his invocations to Jesus Christ and the Virgin of Guadalupe are frequent and although it is not a mass, some of his speeches seem more like sermons.

Evangelists or Christians do attend worship and do not carry images, nor do they recognize the Pope, whom this president gladly praises in the figure of Francis.

The Church as a political actor

Mysteries aside and returning to politics, the Church's latest interventions in the electoral campaign deserve a review of the state of affairs in Mexico.

“I feel the current president is less fundamentalist than the previous ones, I think he has been cautious, but his attitude of denial in the face of the violence that covers the country has left a niche for action for the bishops,” says Galeana.

The Episcopate's call for candidates to sign a consensual document for peace, the professor believes, "has aroused sympathy even among critics."

“Even in the circles of those who are, like me, atheists,” she maintains.

“The country sees the clergy with an empathetic and supportive attitude towards the victims of violence,” adds the author of

Secularization of the State and Society

.

The murder of two Jesuits and a tourist guide in the Tarahumara mountain range (Chihuahua) in June 2022 contributed to this general feeling. The religious banged their fists on the table: enough of so much violence.

The president did not accept the criticism humbly.

Capdevielle believes that these signs, as well as the visits to the Pope, have more to do with the need for votes in the elections, but she continues to be surprised by these gestures that before, she says, “were discussed more among the population and now They don't spark much debate.

She takes it for granted that religion is another actor in politics.

Catholics want to recover their leadership, for a time veiled by the push of evangelicals.

“They are leading the way.”

Gone are the days when Fox was fined for showing a Virgin of Guadalupe during the campaign, remembers Blancarte.

He believes that López Obrador “has mixed things up, from his early lax positions to his influence on evangelicals, he mixed it all up in 2018,” when he won the presidency.

In any case, he is not the only one, “religion has become a general political culture, many mayors, especially in the north, influenced by the United States or by some evangelical organizations, talk about religion in their public interventions, also governors ", it states.

“The most radical secularism has softened.”

Talking about God and thanking the Virgin is now common currency at rallies.

However, everyone agrees that secularism remains firm and society is vigilant so that the lines that would raise Juárez from his grave are not crossed (“There is no need for him to get up, he will already be turning in it,” Blancarte jokes). .

“We have a very important job to do to strengthen and defend the secular State, which has been at risk for some time,” confirms the director of Catholics for the Right to Decide, Aidé García.

“We do not think it is bad that the Episcopate promotes a forum for peace, but it should not replace the State's own actions, that is the risk,” she maintains.

"We must not lose the historic fight for secularism and in Mexico it has been greatly violated, although it must be recognized that progress has also been made in matters that strengthen it, such as the decriminalization of abortion, equal marriages, the rights of women and diversity in general.”

In these aspects, García says, the Church-State separation “has been safeguarded.”

As surveys show, Mexican society protects the teachings emanating from bloody civil struggles and against the foreign invader, from the European conquest through France and the United States, when the Catholic Church positioned itself on the side of the Spanish or the dictator Porfirio Díaz, to cite just a few examples.

When the cassocks treasured three quarters of the productive lands and were owners and lords of formal education.

From the excommunication of the insurrectionary priest Miguel Hidalgo to the Cristero wars of the 20th century, Mexico has struggled to rid itself of a Catholic predominance whose privileges were strongly felt in both New and Old Spain.

And, for now, it seems that he is achieving it.

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