Mexico Under Siege

VATICAN SUGGESTS EXCOMMUNICATING MEXICAN DRUG TRAFFICKERS

The Vatican's No. 2 Official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Calls for a
'Harsh Deterrent' To the Drug Violence That Left More Than 5,000 Dead
Last Year.

Decrying the violence that Mexicans are enduring, the Vatican has
suggested excommunication as a possible punishment for drug
traffickers whose war with the government has led to the deaths of
thousands of people in the last year.

But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of rebuke would
probably have little effect on traffickers and killers who lack a
religious conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio
Bertone, acknowledged.

Speaking to Latin American journalists at the Vatican before
traveling to Mexico on Monday, Bertone said it was a "duty" to fight
drug gangs because their actions represent "the most hypocritical and
terrible way of murdering the dignity and personality of today's youth."

"Certainly, excommunication is a very harsh deterrent that the church
has used to deal with the most serious crimes in its history, from
the very first centuries," Bertone said when asked if the censure
would be appropriate. Excommunication bars a Catholic from receiving
sacraments and participating in public worship.

"But I should observe that excommunication is a punishment that
touches only those who have some form of ecclesiastical conscience,
an ecclesiastical education," he added.

The Vatican, Bertone said, is alarmed at the "disasters" of
drug-fueled violence, kidnappings and generalized insecurity in
Mexico and, increasingly, in some of its Central American neighbors.
He called on Catholics to pray for traffickers to have a change of heart.

Bertone -- whose official title is Vatican secretary of state, making
him a kind of prime minister to Pope Benedict XVI -- will be in
Mexico for the sixth World Meeting of Families, a church conference
that starts this week. His comments were published in Mexican
newspapers Monday.

Within the "narco-culture" that surrounds the drug trade here,
gangsters make use of a blend of Catholic observance mixed with
superstition and their own iconography. For example, many revere the
so-called saint of the narco-traffickers, a Robin Hood-type character
named Jesus Malverde.

President Felipe Calderon launched the Mexican army a little over two
years ago in a nationwide offensive against powerful and well-armed
drug gangs. Rather than pacify the country, the conflict has only
increased the bloodshed. More than 5,000 people were killed last year alone.

Officially, the church hierarchy in Mexico has been supportive of the
government campaign while also urging dialogue and an end to
violence. In some parts of the country, however, priests have been
willing to accept money from local drug lords to pay for church
repairs or other community projects.

"They are very generous with the societies of their towns," Bishop
Carlos Aguiar Retes, president of the Mexican Bishops Conference,
said in April, according to the newspaper Reforma. In some remote
towns, he said, "they put up lights, communications, roads, at their
own expense. . . . Often they also build a church or a chapel."

The remarks outraged many Mexicans, and church officials later said
the bishop was taken out of context. But human rights activists have
long complained of complacency by many priests.

"There are seminaries, churches, who accept money not knowing where
it came from," Mercedes Murillo, president of the Sinaloan Civic
Front in the city of Culiacan, a major drug-trafficking center, said
in a recent interview. "They wash their hands like Pontius Pilate."