NEWS REPORT – CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN – Tuesday December 25, 2012
Associated Press= MONCLOVA, Mexico (AP) — The white-haired bishop stepped before some 7,000 faithful gathered in a baseball stadium in this violence-plagued northern border state. He led the gathering through the rituals of his Mass, reciting prayers echoed back by the massive crowd. And then his voice rose.
Politicians are tied to organized crime, Bishop Raul Vera bellowed while inaugurating the church’s Year of Faith. Lawmakers’ attempts to curb money laundering are intentionally weak. New labor reforms are a way to enslave Mexican workers.
How, Vera asked, can Mexicans follow leaders “who are the ones who have let organized crime grow, who have let criminals do what they do unpunished, because there’s no justice in this country!”
In a nation where some clergy have been cowed into silence by drug cartels and official power, Vera is clearly unafraid to speak. That makes him an important voice of dissent in a country where the Roman Catholic Church often works hand-in-hand with the powerful, and where cynicism about politics is widespread and corrosive.
Vera’s realm is a wide swath of Coahuila, a state bordering Texas that’s become a hideout for the brutal Zetas drug cartel. It’s where the current governor’s nephew was killed in October and the former governor, the victim’s father, resigned last year as leader of the political party that just returned to power with newly inaugurated President Enrique Pena Nieto.
Marked by his unvarnished speech, the Saltillo bishop’s voice carries beyond his diocese here, especially when he weighs in on hot issues such as drug violence, vulnerable immigrants and gay rights.
“What we’re seeing now is nothing other than the reaccommodation of the criminal groups with the new government teams,” Vera said later as he raced back to Saltillo for another Mass. “The criminal groups always have their agreements with those who are in the state governments, in the federal government.”
“It flows out of his conviction: The church is for everyone,” Rev. Robert Coogan said, an American priest in Saltillo ordained by Vera,
This is Christianity…fighting for the less fortunate. My prayers are for Bishop Raul Vera and his flock.
marculyseas 