Head of Mexican bishops asks colleagues to focus on nation's problems

Published: 2005-07-08

MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- As Mexico's bishops gathered to fine-tune church administrative practices, the head of their conference asked them to keep in mind the nation's problems of violent crime, poverty and corruption and not to focus only on the church's inner life. "While we are in here, enjoying the happiness of fraternal meeting and episcopal communion, outside, the world continues its daily course," Bishop Jose Martin Rabago of Leon told more than 80 bishops who gathered July 4 in Cuautitlan for a meeting of the Mexican bishops' conference. Saying that Mexicans live with "a burden of bitter frustration and suffering," Bishop Martin asked his colleagues to consider whether their objectives at the assembly made them akin to the Levite and the priest of the New Testament parable of the good Samaritan, who walked by a man who had been robbed, beaten and left for dead. "Might we be averting our gaze so that it rests ... on ourselves?" Bishop Martin said during the opening of the assembly.

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