Secular state would diminish religious freedom, warns Mexican archbishop

Mexico City, Mexico, Feb 17, 2010 / 21:05 pm

The president of the Bishops’ Conference of Mexico, Archbishop Carlos Aguiar Retes, acknowledged that the country has been a secular state “for more than a century and a half.”  He added that the recent passage of a constitutional reform formally declaring Mexico as “secular” is an attempt to diminish “the religious freedom of citizens.”

Archbishop Aguiar said the amendment to the constitution “simply confirms something that we have already grown accustomed to.  The secular state has been firmly established for a long time.”

“Nobody disputes the appropriate and healthy separation of Church and State,” he said. “Defending the secular state is the least of (the government's) concerns.”

“What they want to do is diminish the religious freedom of Mexico's citizens,” the archbishop explained.

Referring to the Mexican Attorney General’s lawsuit before the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of same-sex “marriage,” Archbishop Aguiar said the Archdiocese of Mexico City hopes “the Court will rule that it is unconstitutional.”

For his part, the president of the National Confraternity of Christian Evangelical Churches, Arturo Farela, also voiced opposition to the modification of the constitution saying, “The churches are part of the Mexican constitution, we are part of the machinery that contributes to the development of the country.”