Mexico City, Mexico, Feb 17, 2010 / 21:05 pm
The president of the Bishops’ Conference of Mexico, Archbishop Carlos Aguiar Retes, acknowledged that the country has been a secular state “for more than a century and a half.” He added that the recent passage of a constitutional reform formally declaring Mexico as “secular” is an attempt to diminish “the religious freedom of citizens.”
Archbishop Aguiar said the amendment to the constitution “simply confirms something that we have already grown accustomed to. The secular state has been firmly established for a long time.”
“Nobody disputes the appropriate and healthy separation of Church and State,” he said. “Defending the secular state is the least of (the government's) concerns.”
“What they want to do is diminish the religious freedom of Mexico's citizens,” the archbishop explained.