Leaving on a visit to Mexico, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has suggested excommunication as a punishment for drug traffickers.
But the Church's severest form of rebuke would probably have little effect on the traffickers and killers who lack a religious conscience, Cardinal Bertone, conceded, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Speaking to Latin American journalists before traveling to Mexico, Cardinal 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, Cardinal Bertone said, is alarmed at the "disasters" of drug-fuelled violence, kidnappings and generalised insecurity in Mexico and, increasingly, in some of its Central American neighbours. He called on Catholics to pray for traffickers to have a change of heart.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched the country's 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 druglords 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 last 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.
"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 centre, said in a recent interview. "They wash their hands like Pontius Pilate."
SOURCE
Vatican suggests excommunicating Mexican drug traffickers (Los Angeles Times)