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I Ic dic \(I r \(ml dir \\\\ di l killIC 1,1! p l I \\ di C p i i 1 IL ,141o o # 0 0 /46te 1423 llth Street 1 110 .410′ Port Aransas, TX 78373 IS S call 1 or kc-,crudr s ,f o rts . ….we46 ,,, ol`%, i , …-04./b. ;e t . INI\(1/1,1 Al Ir k I ‘WWI\( I 1100’011 \(71\(11111 I \\ I Pets Welcome NEW MEXICO CITY BISHOP CLEANS HOUSE Mexico City The selection of Norberto Rivera Carrera as the 33rd archbishop \(and soon to be Carwatchers here. Frontrunners to succeed the aging Ernesto Corripio had been conservative bishops Javier Lozano Barragan of Zacatecas and Cuernavaca’s Luis Reynoso Cervantes, both collaborators of Papal Nuncio Giralamo Prigione, whose group wields considerable influence within the Mexican Catholic Church. The tall, handsome Rivera, a small-town bishop from Tehuacan in the central Mexican state of Puebla, who now assumes direction of the in the Roman Catholic world, is also a Prigione ally who has dealt harshly with liberation theologians, behavior sure to have won him favor in the office of the Nuncio. What allowed Rivera to prevail over rival “Prigione boys” \(as members are labeled in Reynoso? Most observers concur that the determining factor was the new archbishop’s ageat 53, barring the unexpected, Norberto Rivera will head the most important diocese in Mexico for the next 23 years. Rivera received his golden shovel from Pope John Paul II in Rome in late June and ascended to the archbishop’s throne July 25. A social conservative, he views the deterioration of the family as the fundamental cause for Christian concern. Interviewed in the Vatican by La Jomada’s Jose Antonio Roman, Rivera insisted that he was not an extension of the office of the nuncio or the Pope. On the other hand, he is decidedly not a proponent of liberation theology. In 1990, Rivera shuttered a Tehuacan seminary on orders from the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education. The Regional Seminary of the South service in the “Pacifico Sur” \(Pacific pas and Oaxaca, the nation’s two most poverty-stricken states, which also include Mexico’s largest indigenous communitiesa place where the Church of the Poor has had a foothold since the 1960s. Among the founders of Seresur were San Cristobal de las Casas’ beleaguered Bishop Samuel Ruiz, Arturo Lona of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, the then-Archbishop of Oaxka one-time Pacific South archbishop Ernesto Corripio, the man Rivera now replaces. Seresur was ordered closed after a sur prise 1989 visit by the papal nuncio, fol lowed by an investigation by Prigione asso ciates were subsequently assigned to investigate the seminary. The Sacred Con gregation report, based on the inquiry car and Alberto Suarez Inda \(Moreliaboth received their golden shovels in June along “A Marxist Cosmovision,” preaching “class war,” and transforming priests into “agents of social change.” Seminarians staged a protest march after Rivera fired the Seresur teaching staff and limited students to one book per course. The Tehuacan Bishop responded by expelling the student body and closing down the training centerthe seminary has since reopened, under a conservative administration. MEXICO CITY’S new archbishop appears to have played a significant role in the deportation of a foreign priest that bears striking similarities to the recent expulsion of three Chiapas church workers In July 1994, Gonzalo Hallo, an Ecuadoran who had served for 20 years as the parish priest of Chapulco, Puebla, was halted by federal immigration agents at a highway roadblock, and charged with arming parishioners in. his Sierra Negra town. Hallo was whisked to the Mexico City airport in handcuffs and put on a plane for Quito within 24 hours of his arrest. No proof against the priest was ever offered. Hallo, a confederate of Rivera’s predecessor as bishop of Tehuacan, had battled for years with Rivera over the diocese’ s bank accounts. The retirement of 75-year-old Ernesto Corripio, who has been archbishop since 1978, and his replacement by a member of the Prigione group, is not good news for Samuel Ruiz. In January 1994, Cardinal Corripio refused to buckle to pressures applied by the nuncio and the Mexican Presidency, who pressed him to condemn Bishop Ruiz as the fomenter of the Zapatista rebellion. Instead, in a dramatic public embrace of Don Samuel, the prelate reaffirmed his . support. The naming of” Rivera to replace Corripio is “the crowning glory of the nuncio’s work in Mexico,” thinks Antonio Roquefio, legal adviser to the outgoing Cardinal. All that is left “to put the broach of gold” on Prigione’s work here in Mexico is “to get rid of Don Samuel,” Roquelio told La Jornada. Corripio and the nuncio carried out a long-standing and very public feud over Vatican efforts to divide Mexico City into distinct dioceses. If the nuncio is to preside over Don Samuel’s exit from San Cristobal, he will have to move quicklyRuiz is now five years away from mandatory retirement and, at 72, Prigione’ s time is even shorter. The elevation of Norberto Rivera adds one more voice to the anti-Ruiz chorus. In recent public interviews, both Bishops 1 / Reynoso Cervantes and Berlies have charged that Don Samuel is inciting class warfare in Chiapas. Rivera himself told the Italian magazine 30 Giorno that shadowy forces are behind the Zapatista rebels, implying that the Bishop of San Cristobal was somehow involved. The Mexico City archdiocese over which Norberto Rivera will preside will be considerably smallerand poorerthan the one governed by his predecessor. Ironically, although Rivera owes his nomination to Prigione, it has been the nuncio’ s project to reorganize the huge diocese into more manageable units. The suburban municipality of Ecatepec, with a population of more than a million, was recently split off from the archdiocese and awarded to a onetime radical bishop who has since become a “Prigione boy.” Another Prigione dream that is about to come true: the separation of the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the creation of a new bishopric at the shrine. The Basflica is the Mexican Church’s biggest moneymaker and the Vatican has long wanted to have a more direct administrative relationship with the 10-acre enclave in northern Mexico City. Now the Basilica, which has grown increasingly to resemble a religious theme park in recent years, is undergoing a four-year facelift that will convert the precinct into “a spiritual oasis,” according to church planners. A July 13 La Jornada dispatch from Rome indicates that the Vatican has given the green light to the division of the Mexico City archdiocese into four separate dioceses, including the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. e %%.41 S C a i f ;# Horse Inn \(11,1c 18 AUGUST 11, 1995