2023-06-11 19:17:00
June 11, 2023 / 12:17 p.m.
The Conference of the Mexican Episcopate (CEM) expressed its concern about the draft resolution, which on June 14 will be debated in the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), whose purpose is to declare unconstitutional the presence of the births of Jesus in public spaces.
The draft judgment of amparo 216/2022 will have Minister Juan Luis González Alcántara as speaker. If approved by four of the five members of the First Chamber, it would establish jurisprudence.
This is based on an amparo filed by the NGO Kanan Derechos Humanos against the municipalities of Mérida, Chocholá and Mocochá in the state of Yucatán, for the placement of “decorative objects alluding to the ‘birth of Jesus Christ’ in the months of December and January”, in public spaces.
In a video published yesterday June 10, the president of the CEM, Monsignor Ramón Castro Castro, rejected that the public exhibition of these Christian symbols violates “religious freedom, the constitutional principles of the secular State, as well as the principle of equality and nondiscrimination”.
“The project in question is completely unaware of the social and cultural anthropological context of the Mexican people,” he said.
It indicated that “religious symbols and cultural traditions deserve legal recognition, especially when they have acquired new dimensions together with the religion itself that contribute to the wealth and identity of the nation itself, which is inserted in popular traditions (…), such as celebrations, pilgrimages, processions, patron saint festivals, images and many others”.
“Let us think for a moment about the thousands of pilgrims, thousands of images of the Virgin of Guadalupe that the people venerate in markets, transportation sites, crossroads, neighborhoods, hospitals, which could be taken away with a decision like the one proposed. ”, pointed out the general secretary of the CEM.
For this reason, he stated, “the ideas contained in the document that will be discussed (…) constitute an act of repression against the symbols and cultural expressions that are part of the historical and cultural heritage of the Mexican people, which does not find support in precedents in other democratic countries, nor international human rights systems.
Finally, he recalled that Pope Francis has pointed out that respect for minorities, whether agnostics or atheists, does not consist in silencing the majority of believers “arbitrarily” or ignoring the richness of their religious traditions.
“That, in the long run, would foster resentment more than tolerance and peace. We pray to Santa María de Guadalupe, Mother of the Mexicans, to intercede for her people who love and venerate him so much throughout Mexico ”, she concluded.
For its part, the Mexican platform Hazte Sentir has launched a signature campaign through Activate to oppose the prohibition of the presence of births in public spaces.
Eduardo Berdejo is a graduate of the National University of San Marcos (Peru). He has been part of the ACI Prensa team since 2001.
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