SUMMARY EXPULSION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18763, 17 January 1923, Page 4

SUMMARY EXPULSION.

On the face of it, the order which President Obregon has issued for the expulsion from Mexico of the Papal delegate, on the ground of his violation of the law forbidding religious ceremonials- in public places, is high-handed a,s well as harsh. The allegation against the delegate is that he violated a statute of 1857, but the action which has provoked tho presidential decree would appear to have involved an infringement of enactments of much more recent date. Tho religious aspects of tho Mexican Constitution of 1917 furnish an interesting study in drastic anti-clerical provisions. One of the articles lays it down that “every religious act of public worship shall be preformed strictly within tho places of public worship, which shall bo at all times under governmental supervision.” Dr Cleven, of Pittsburg University, writes: “It has been the experience of the Mexican people to have the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church frequently take a large part in the political affairs of their country, and, in tho minds of the present political leaders, at least, the clericals have often been associated with reactionaries and the enemies of political and religious liberty. The result is a very general and genuine repugnance towards clericalism of every kind, which has led tho people to demand, through their civil representatives, a control of the very sources of this power.” Under the constitution there is a guarantee of freedom of religious worship, hut it is a guarantee with distinct limitations. The constitution definitely provides that the

Federal authorities shall have control of religious worship and outward ecclesiastical forms. There has been a close association of the agrarian with the ecclesiastical problem in Mexico. The Reman Catholic Church was established in Mexico almost contemporaneously with the '“establishment there of Spanish power early in the sixteenth century. For fully three centuries it enjoyed a complete monopoly of the religious activities in New Spain, and, as will be readily understood, acquired very large landed estates and much wealth. Under the republican regime the effort of the people has been in the direction of secularising ecclesiastical property. The revolution of 1910-1920 had as one of its objects the definite solution of this so-called “religio-agrarian” problem and the people of Mexico, having secured possession of this property, placed the control of it in the hands of the Federal Government. All things considered, it may not be very surprising that the Papal delegate to Mexico has encountered trouble.