Reforma: Denise Dresser*
Translated by Amanda Moody
Beautiful, painful, important words from the Pope. And, like all beauty, they have a moral element. In this case, it's a call to the country to look at itself just as it is: corrupt, violent, dangerous and divided. A country from which many flee and in which many die.
It's an exhortation to the politicians to behave as they currently do not. To behave honestly, with commitment, with a vision of the common good. It's a wake-up call to those who look the other way and cripple the faith. To those with blood on their hands, pockets stuffed with dirty money and numbed consciences. The privileged politicians, the uncontrolled criminals, the heartless church officials. Called together to be told things as men are told things: openly. Called together to decipher together the mysterious face of Mexico.
Here is the long and painful history of the country captured in a few speeches. The loneliness, the isolation, the marginalization. A country where the bishops and the church have too often avoided transparency, hiding themselves away in the dark. Where dozens who heard him in the Cathedral have let themselves be corrupted "by trivial materialism and under-the-table agreements, mounted on the horses and carriages of today's pharaohs". Here is the clerical hierarchy, so far from God and so close to their "vain career projects, their empty plans for supremacy, their barren clubs of common interest".
Translated by Amanda Moody
Beautiful, painful, important words from the Pope. And, like all beauty, they have a moral element. In this case, it's a call to the country to look at itself just as it is: corrupt, violent, dangerous and divided. A country from which many flee and in which many die.
It's an exhortation to the politicians to behave as they currently do not. To behave honestly, with commitment, with a vision of the common good. It's a wake-up call to those who look the other way and cripple the faith. To those with blood on their hands, pockets stuffed with dirty money and numbed consciences. The privileged politicians, the uncontrolled criminals, the heartless church officials. Called together to be told things as men are told things: openly. Called together to decipher together the mysterious face of Mexico.
Here is the long and painful history of the country captured in a few speeches. The loneliness, the isolation, the marginalization. A country where the bishops and the church have too often avoided transparency, hiding themselves away in the dark. Where dozens who heard him in the Cathedral have let themselves be corrupted "by trivial materialism and under-the-table agreements, mounted on the horses and carriages of today's pharaohs". Here is the clerical hierarchy, so far from God and so close to their "vain career projects, their empty plans for supremacy, their barren clubs of common interest".
With sharp elegance, the Pope was describing here the careers of Norberto Rivera [Cardinal and Archibishop of Mexico City] and Onésimo Cepeda [former bishop of Ecatapec, State of Mexico, adjacent to Mexico City, famous for his relationships with the powerful] and their acolytes, summarized in a couple of sentences. The absence of gentleness, the nonexistence of humility, the presence of arrogance. A church so different from that which the Pope asks for, one which knows how to protect the faces of the men who knock on its door, the only church which is then able to speak to them of God. A church that does not know how to go barefoot and stand beside the people, because it is too close to power. Bishops who are princes, arriving late and pompous to the meeting with themselves, with history and with God.
The Pope at the National Palace, where governors and senators and politicians of all persuasions kiss his hand, kneel down and gloat. And he tells them that Mexico is a great country, and would be what we want it to be if there were men and women committed to the common good. If its religious associations had not chosen the path of privilege and benefit for a few - to the detriment of the common good. Manuel Velasco [governor of Chiapas] listening. Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong [Secretary of Government Relations] listening. Alberto Anaya [president of Labor Party] listening.
Those responsible for the culture of rejection, putting the brakes on development. Listening as if the diagnosis presented has nothing to do with their own actions. The Mexican political class, responsible for Mexico’s degradation, present for photo opportunities, to kiss the ring, to say they were present and to boast about it. The message will be covered by some parts of the media before being filed away.
And in a few days the Pope will leave and his words, which should be carved on every wall of the new city, will evaporate. They will forget. Norberto Rivera will return to his excesses and Onésimo Cepeda to his golf afternoons. Conservative priests will keep themselves busy denying communion to divorced people who remarry, preaching against condom use, denying women significance or presence, covering up pedophilia and providing reasons for the exodus of the faithful.
Of the monstrous pederast Marcial Maciel and his “punishment” in a house with a garden, not a word will be spoken. Corruption in Mexico will remain equivalent to 9% of GDP. We will continue to hold second place in the global impunity rankings. There will still be 27,657 disappeared. We will still be the third worst country in the world in which to be a journalist.
Of the “rebel Pope” as the journalist Alma Guillermoprieto called him, there will remain the memory of his humanity, his nonconformity. Traces of the man described as “complicated, conservative and radical, charitable and uncompromising, a mass of contradictions” will remain. Someone who leaves behind him - for those who listened attentively to his message of honesty, charity, faith lived with passion, of life as a commitment - the task of cleaning the temple. As Jesus did with those who had turned Jerusalem, the house of God, into a place of mercenaries and merchants. A den of thieves and misers and userers, just as Mexico is today. Many of them sitting in the National Palace, in the Cathedral, milling around a man who protests to them about what they have done to our temple, to the house which belongs to us all. The house with space for those who do not find it today. Mexico.
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*Denise Dresser is a Mexican political analyst, writer, and university professor. After completing undergraduate work at The College of Mexico, she earned her Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton University. She is currently a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), where she teaches courses such as Comparative Politics, Political Economy and Contemporary Mexican Politics. She has taught at Georgetown University and the University of California. In December 2015, she was decorated as a Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government. Twitter: @DeniseDresserG
*Denise Dresser is a Mexican political analyst, writer, and university professor. After completing undergraduate work at The College of Mexico, she earned her Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton University. She is currently a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), where she teaches courses such as Comparative Politics, Political Economy and Contemporary Mexican Politics. She has taught at Georgetown University and the University of California. In December 2015, she was decorated as a Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government. Twitter: @DeniseDresserG