Prohibiting Nativity scenes in Mexico would be an ‘attack’ on religious freedom, group says

CNA Newsroom, Nov 3, 2022 / 18:00 pm

The National Front for the Family (FNF) charged that the possibility ban on Nativity scenes on public property in Mexico would be “an enormous absurdity” and “a devious attack on religious freedom.”

In a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister news agency, Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of FNF, warned that “religious freedom is under attack in Mexico.”

On Nov. 9, the First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) will study a constitutional-protection lawsuit that opposes the placement of “decorative objects alluding to the ‘birth of Jesus Christ’ in the months of December and January” on public property.

The legal challenge was filed against the Chocholá City Council in the Mexican state of Yucatán. However, if the suit is upheld by the Supreme Court, it would pave the way for this ban to be imposed throughout the country.

The draft ruling prepared by Justice Juan Luis González Alcántara Carrancá, which will be discussed and voted on in the First Chamber of the SCJN, seeks to make the city council “refrain in the future from placing signs on the public property of the Municipality of Chocholá that allude to a specific religious conviction.”

The possible ruling by the Supreme Court would not only affect Nativity scenes but also the placement of any religious image on public property.

Cortés criticized the president of the Supreme Court, Justice Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea, who has celebrated the decriminalization of abortion in various Mexican states, pointing out that “not satisfied with trying to prevent births in Mexico, now he wants to prohibit the birth of Jesus Christ.”

If the ruling proposed by González is approved, he said, Mexico would return “to those fateful times before” the Cristero War, after the enactment of the Calles Law in 1926.

Mexico’s 1917 Constitution annulled the Church’s legal personality, restricted public worship, and limited the number of priests, among other measures. 

When Plutarco Elías Calles became president, he enacted the 1926 Law on the Tolerance of Worship, known as the Calles Law, to make the constitutional articles against the Church effective, even banning clerical dress, religious congregations, and the teaching of religion in schools.

The Cristero War was an armed popular uprising by ordinary Mexicans against the government in order to restore religious freedom.

To send a clear message to the Supreme Court, Cortés encouraged people to set up Nativity scenes early, take photos of them, and upload them on social media.

In addition, he encouraged people to sign the “Now the Court is going after Christmas” campaign launched on the Mexican platform Actívate, which already has more than 14,000 signatures.

Cortés stressed that the effort to ban Nativity scenes on public property is “an enormous absurdity, a contradiction, and a devious attack on religious freedom.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.