Citing a “profound crisis of violence and social disintegration,” Mexico’s Catholic bishops are staking out an aggressive new role in national security, going so far as to sit down with feuding drug traffickers in one blood-soaked state to hammer out a truce.

The church is also pressing for a change in the anti-crime strategy pursued by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Church leaders recently persuaded the candidates in the July 2 presidential election to sign a “National Commitment for Peace” that includes a lengthy list of proposed reforms, such as strengthening local police forces and making the justice system more professional and transparent.

Together, the initiatives amount to a new level of activism for a church that has largely stayed outside the political fray. Mexico is the world’s second-most-populous Catholic country, after Brazil. But its priests have historically been constrained by the anticlerical policies that took root during the 19th-century war of independence from Spain. Until the 1990s, it was illegal for priests even to wear their vestments in public.

The church is acting now, Bishop Ramón Castro says, because it has received a torrent of complaints from parishioners who have suffered extortion, robbery and the disappearance of loved ones.

Non-paywall link