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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Pope arrives in Mexico Saturday |
| 2012-03-21 |
| From TFA: Pope Benedict arrives in Mexico seven days before campaigns kick off for the July 1 presidential elections. Such a visit would have been unthinkable a generation ago in a nation where references to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico's patroness, have been enough to annul elections. The visit also comes as the Mexican Senate debates constitutional changes that would guarantee the right to hold religious services outside authorized places of worship. Catholic leaders caution against reading too much into the timing of the trip. They say the pope's agenda has nothing to do with domestic politics. Priest Jorge Raúl Villegas, spokesman for the Archdiocese of León, expects the pope's message to be "encouraging" for a country where a war on drug cartels and organized crime has claimed about 47,000 lives in five years. The crackdown has caused controversy for the church: Some parishes accept "narcolimosnas," or drug alms, from cartels for charitable work. |
| Posted by:badanov |