4 - Mexico and Latin America

Summary

Religion is the law of conscience. Any law imposed on it annuls it, because when we enforce duty, we remove merit from faith, which is the basis of religion. The precepts and sacred dogmas of religion are useful, luminous proofs of transcendence; we should all profess them, but this obligation is moral, not political.

– Simón Bolívar, Address to the Constituent Congress (1826)

On january 28, 1992, the Mexican national legislature approved changes to the country's revolutionary 1917 Constitution and effectively reversed eight decades of officially sanctioned hostility toward religious organizations, including principally (and surprisingly) the Roman Catholic Church. Church leaders greeted this new legal framework with a sense of optimism and accomplishment, having obtained the legal recognition and freedom it had sought for many years. Jerónimo Prigione, the papal nuncio who spearheaded the Church's struggle to obtain legal recognition, stated, “We [the Catholic hierarchy] are sincerely appreciative and thankful for the effort of the House of Deputies, and the concern of [President Carlos Salinas], a wise statesman … for opening new horizons in the relations between the Church and State [sic], channeling the forces of the two societies toward the service of social and religious peace” (Prigione 1992, 24). Archbishop Adolfo Suárez Rivera, then president of the Conferencia del Episcopado Mexicano (CEM), declared that this legislation “has marked a new stage in our history.