ARO: The Vatican thinks outside the box

To the extent the drug war is about social control, these folks have two millennia of expertise in that field.
I also disagree with Cardinal Bertone when he says these killers lack a religious conscience.  Some of the worst butchers in history have found ways to internally rationalize their acts -- no matter how twisted their reasoning (the Inquisition comes to mind).  It wouldn't surprise me if this had more success than the Merida Initiative (so would a bowl of chicken soup, for that matter) and it's certainly a lot cheaper and less bloody.
-Sanho
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MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Vatican suggests excommunicating Mexican drug traffickers
The Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, calls for a 'harsh deterrent' to the drug violence that left more than 5,000 dead last year.
By Tracy Wilkinson
The Los Angeles Times
January 13, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City ­
Decrying the violence that Mexicans are enduring, the Vatican has suggested excommunication as a possible punishment for drug traffickers whose war with the government has led to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year.

But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of
rebuke would probably have little effect on
traffickers and killers who lack a religious
conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official,
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, acknowledged.

Speaking to Latin American journalists at the
Vatican before traveling to Mexico on Monday,
Bertone said it was a "duty" to fight drug gangs
because their actions represent "the most
hypocritical and terrible way of murdering the
dignity and personality of today's youth."

"Certainly, excommunication is a very harsh
deterrent that the church has used to deal with
the most serious crimes in its history, from the
very first centuries," Bertone said when asked if
the censure would be appropriate. Excommunication
bars a Catholic from receiving sacraments and participating in public
worship.

"But I should observe that excommunication is a
punishment that touches only those who have some
form of ecclesiastical conscience, an ecclesiastical education," he added.

The Vatican, Bertone said, is alarmed at the
"disasters" of drug-fueled violence, kidnappings
and generalized insecurity in Mexico and,
increasingly, in some of its Central American
neighbors. He called on Catholics to pray for
traffickers to have a change of heart.

Bertone -- whose official title is Vatican
secretary of state, making him a kind of prime
minister to Pope Benedict XVI -- will be in
Mexico for the sixth World Meeting of Families, a
church conference that starts this week. His
comments were published in Mexican newspapers Monday.

Within the "narco-culture" that surrounds the
drug trade here, gangsters make use of a blend of
Catholic observance mixed with superstition and
their own iconography. For example, many revere
the so-called saint of the narco- traffickers, a
Robin Hood-type character named Jesus Malverde.

President Felipe Calderon launched the Mexican
army a little over two years ago in a nationwide
offensive against powerful and well-armed drug
gangs. Rather than pacify the country, the
conflict has only increased the bloodshed. More
than 5,000 people were killed last year alone.

Officially, the church hierarchy in Mexico has
been supportive of the government campaign while
also urging dialogue and an end to violence. In
some parts of the country, however, priests have
been willing to accept money from local drug
lords to pay for church repairs or other community projects.

"They are very generous with the societies of
their towns," Bishop Carlos Aguiar Retes,
president of the Mexican Bishops Conference, said
in April, according to the newspaper Reforma. In
some remote towns, he said, "they put up lights,
communications, roads, at their own expense. . .
Often they also build a church or a chapel."

The remarks outraged many Mexicans, and church
officials later said the bishop was taken out of
context. But human rights activists have long
complained of complacency by many priests.

"There are seminaries, churches, who accept money
not knowing where it came from," Mercedes
Murillo, president of the Sinaloan Civic Front in
the city of Culiacan, a major drug-trafficking
center, said in a recent interview. "They wash
their hands like Pontius Pilate."

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Times staff writer Maria De Cristofaro in Rome contributed to this report.