No one expected Pope Francis to have soft words for the mafia when he visited Naples last year. But the vehemence of his denunciation was still a surprise, even to veteran Francis watchers. “A corrupt society stinks like a rotting corpse,” he said in Scampia, a stronghold of the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra. “And a Christian that becomes corrupt isn’t Christian, [he] stinks!”
Next month, on February 12, the Pope arrives in Mexico, a country where drug cartels make organised crime in Naples seem pretty small fry. The Pontiff, of course, is not going to mince his words. The stage is set for a showdown. The question is: will Mexico listen? And will Pope Francis, thunderously denouncing organised crime, as he no doubt will do, be putting himself in any danger?
With his remarks about the country’s crime problems the Pope has already offended some Mexicans. After the disappearance – and assumed massacre – of 43 students last year, he said: “I think the Devil is punishing Mexico with great fury.” He added that “everyone has to put their back into resolving” the criminal malaise afflicting the country.
On the surface Latin American drug traffickers tend to be quite devout and potentially amenable to the Pope’s message. Drugs kingpin “El Chapo”, in his interview with actor Sean Penn before his recent arrest, recalled asking God for help in escaping from prison, and thanked the Lord that his mother was still alive. He added that he wanted to spend “the days God gives me” with his family.
Mexican traffickers have a particular devotion to St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Then there are folk saints, most notably Santa Muerte, St Death, a figure not recognised by the Church but cherished deeply by the “narcos”.
Christian morality, of course, is absent. Andrew Chesnut, an expert on Latin American religious history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, says: “What narcos seek from religion, be it Catholicism or folk saints, such as Santa Muerte, is supernatural protection, vengeance and prosperity.”
A useful comparison might be with medieval monarchs, men who might put a whole town to the sword and then donate money towards building a cathedral in thanksgiving; England’s most genuinely devout monarchs, such as Canute, William the Conqueror and Henry V, were also its most bloodthirsty.
Likewise, drug lord Heriberto Lazcano funded a chapel in the village of Tezontle, Hidalgo state, which bears a plaque proclaiming his donation. The plaque reads: “Lord, hear my prayer; listen to my cry for mercy; in your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief.” At the same time Lazcano, better known as El-Lazca or El Verdugo, “the Executioner”, used to feed his victims to lions before his reign as a crime kingpin ended in a hail of bullets.
The case of a drug cartel supporting the Church financially is not unique. Dr Chesnut says: “Churches that refuse narcolimosnas [narco-donations] can be at risk of retaliation from local narcos who feel slighted.”
Such corruption will no doubt provoke harsh words from the Pope. But it’s worth remembering, too, that Mexico is an extremely dangerous country in which to be a priest. According to the Catholic Multimedia Center, 34 priests were murdered between 1990 and 2004 (along with one deacon, three Religious, five lay members and a Catholic journalist).
One state included in Pope Francis’s itinerary, Michoacán, has particularly fearless priests who have put themselves on the front lines of the drug war by denouncing the cartels and even blessing the autodefensa, or paramilitary self-defence groups, that are ostensibly fighting to protect the citizenry from the predatory cartels.
“In fact,” says Dr Chesnut, “the main reason Pope Francis is visiting the state capital, Morelia, is because he elevated the city’s archbishop to cardinal a year ago, primarily because of the cleric’s outspoken condemnations of narco-violence in the state.”
Paul Vallely, author of Pope Francis: the Struggle for the Soul of Catholicism, believes the trip may be challenging for Francis. He says: “It will be one of the most dangerous of his overseas trips … He’s visiting Ciudad Juárez, once the murder capital of the world, which is notorious for the unsolved killings of hundreds of women. He can also be expected to confront the country’s enormous problem with drug-cartel violence during a visit to the state of Michoacan where tens of thousands of people have died in the past decade… Don’t expect him to pull his punches. He didn’t as Archbishop in Buenos Aires.” With the Pope’s well-known refusal of any extra security, and his decision to travel in an open and unarmoured Popemobile, “there are clear dangers”, Vallely warns.
But, Dr Chesnut says, even among the most ruthless gangsters there are rules. “I am quite confident that we will see a repeat of Benedict XVI’s visit in which cartels active in the city of León promised to suspend violence during his visit. Wherever he travels, including Mexico, the greatest threat to the Argentine pope is posed by Islamist jihadis, not narcos.”
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