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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Mexico's Fox to Make History at Pope's Funeral
 El Universal
| | Fox and his wife, Marta Sahagun, will join kings, queens and other heads of state to pay their respects to the Pope. |
Mexico City - Mexican President Vicente Fox, who famously broke a national political taboo when he kissed the Pope's ring in 2002, will make history again on Friday as the first Mexican leader to attend a papal funeral.
Mexico is the world's second-largest Catholic country but had decades of anti-clerical rule following the 1910 Mexican Revolution.
Providing the Senate approves the trip, Fox and his wife, Marta Sahagun, will join kings, queens and other heads of state to pay their respects to the man who melted the ice between Mexico and the Vatican after decades of animosity.
The Pope was key in establishing diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Mexico in 1992.
In 1979, when he paid the first of his five visits to Mexico, the Polish Pontiff was received by then president Jose Lopez Portillo as a private citizen with no fanfare.
Fox, a devout Catholic, ousted the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, at polls in 2000.
During a papal visit two years later, he became the first president to attend a papal mass and caused uproar by kneeling to kiss the Pope's ring -- a move that was cheered by many Mexicans but also caused concern.
"It was a head of state kissing the ring of another head of state, which raised eyebrows among more than one secular person in Mexico," historian Lorenzo Meyer said.
"Vicente Fox's trip (this week) represents the complete normalization of diplomatic relations," Meyer told daily Reforma.
PRI governments had a staunchly secular streak during the party's 71 years in office, stemming from the Church's opposition to the Revolution.
For much of that time, Mexican priests were banned from wearing clerical collars in public, mentioning politics in sermons and voting in elections.
In the 19th century, following Mexican independence, the government confiscated church property, suppressed religious orders and restricted church services, angry about Catholic abuses during Spanish colonial rule.
Yet Mexicans clung to their faith, with roughly 85 percent still Catholic today, prompting the Pope to dub Mexico "always faithful." |
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