Mexican cardinal's report to pope criticizes ruling party

Published: 2005-09-29

MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- Mexican Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez presented Pope Benedict XVI with a report that criticizes Mexico's ruling party for being lax on drug trafficking and corruption. "Public morality is inevitably framed within the general corruption that there is in the country," Cardinal Sandoval said in the 188-page report handed to the pope at the Vatican Sept. 29. "Those that govern generally promise much and do little for the population, which continues to get poorer each day," the cardinal said. Five years after Mexico held its first truly democratic elections and unseated the Institutional Revolutionary Party that had held power for 71 straight years, "the current party in power has not distanced itself from corruption," Cardinal Sandoval said in his report, according to excerpts published in the Reforma newspaper. The cardinal and other Mexican bishops were making their "ad limina" visits to the Vatican, which bishops make every five years to report on their dioceses.

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