Mexico: Cardinal and exorcists react to Claudia Sheinbaum’s indigenous ritual

A cardinal and three priests, two of them exorcists, spoke after carrying out a “cleansing” ritual during the inauguration of the new president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum.

Sheinbaum, candidate of the Let’s Keep Making History alliance—which brings together the political groups National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), the Labor Party (PT), and the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM)—was the winner of the presidential elections on December 2. June of this year. He took office on October 1.

Sheinbaum succeeds Andrés Manuel López Obrador, founder of MORENA, in the Mexican government, who in December 2018 participated in a similar ceremony to begin his mandate.

Among the various events of the inauguration of the first Mexican female president in the Plaza de la Constitución – commonly known as Zócalo –, a group of indigenous women held a “sacred ceremony” with incense, plants, fruits and flowers, among others. , all with “hands raised towards the east, where the sun rises,” according to one of the participants, according to a report from the Mexican channel N+.

“We invoke the nahuales, the deities and the other divine beings and spirits that inhabit this place. We ask for life, enlightenment and wisdom for the constitutional president, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo,” said one of the women at the beginning of the event.

“We entrust it to our African ancestors.” “We ask you, father sun, to live in his heart, just as you live in the hearts of the girls and women of Mexico,” he added, during the ritual that lasted about half an hour.

“A symbolic act of an outstanding debt”

Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi, Bishop Emeritus of the Mexican diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, told ACI Prensa that he has “no elements to classify this act as spectacle or populism; On the contrary, I consider it a symbolic act of an outstanding debt with the native peoples and a decision to revalue and recognize their rights also in our laws.”

After recalling the similar act carried out years ago by López Obrador, the cardinal highlighted that, with this event, Claudia Sheibaum “wants to make these peoples more visible, particularly indigenous women, the most marginalized. We hope that this is reflected in a daily commitment to these communities and that this permeates society, in which there is still persistent racism.”

Regarding religious freedom, the cardinal said that he hopes that the president guarantees it and “has an open mind and heart to listen and take into account the contribution that the Christian religion makes to the construction of social peace.”

“Our people are deeply Christian, Catholic”

Father Alberto Medel, exorcist and coordinator of the Theological Committee of the College of Exorcists of the Primate Archdiocese of Mexico, explained to ACI Prensa about the ritual that “in reality, the indigenous peoples are not what is represented there.”

“I do not doubt that there are still small groups that worship or venerate the ancient indigenous deities, but the truth is that our people are deeply Christian, Catholic,” he stressed, and therefore “their traditions cannot be understood without the Christian faith.”

After rejecting the claim of some that indigenous peoples are “syncretic,” the Mexican exorcist assured: “I, frankly, do not believe it.”

Therefore, “what we saw there, I got the impression that it was the script that some of the indigenous women read, that was written by someone. An indigenous person does not speak like that, they use terms that common people do not use, rather it was written by someone, and well, once read by a person like that, it ends up closing the performancebut it is not authentically indigenous.”

“This is just a performance, it is a way to ingratiate oneself, not even with the indigenous people, but rather to ingratiate oneself with a mass that applauds this indigenous sentimentality, because in the end they end up using the supposed beliefs of the people,” lamented the priest.

After specifying that a ritual such as the taking of command does not vindicate the indigenous people but rather “makes them appear to be believers in nonsense that no one believes today,” Father Medel warned that “presenting people who believe that the sun is a divinity or that the moon is a divinity, because it is ridiculing them.”

“So, I believe that those who do all these things, simply and simply, have no scruples about denigrating people,” he stressed.

“A witchcraft ritual”

Father Eduardo Hayen, exorcist of the Mexican diocese of Ciudad Juárez, published an article titled Catholics and pagan ritualsin which he considered that the ceremony was actually “a witchcraft ritual.”

Father Hayen then recalls that Sheinbaum “is of Jewish origin, he does not belong to any ethnic group nor does he practice ancestral religions. If she allowed herself to be cleansed of ‘bad vibes’ it is, rather, for ideological and populist reasons than religious ones. “Sheinbaum follows the same little book of indigenism as his predecessor.”

The priest then warns that Catholics should not participate in ceremonies of this type. “Claudia Sheinbaum did not participate in an explicit and direct satanic cult. However, the worship of Satan can be carried out by believing, out of ignorance, that idols, death or unknown forces are worshiped.”

“There are groups that present themselves as non-satanic because they do not directly invoke demons, but rather they present themselves as cultural groups. But in reality they are satanic in a broad sense because they practice neopagan rites such as worship of Mother Earth, the Mother Goddess, Mother Nature or Pachamama,” warns the priest.

Father Hayen also reminds us that Catholics “should not believe that it is harmless to participate in certain pre-Hispanic rituals such as those in which some Latin American presidents participate.”

“The objects used in pagan rituals can become – as exorcism teaches – binding objects that facilitate the extraordinary action of the demon on the person who uses them,” he warns.

Superstition that opens “doors to the devil”

Father Hugo Valdemar, who was director of Communication of the Archdiocese of Mexico for 15 years, during the pastoral government of Cardinal Norberto Rivera, told ACI Prensa that these types of rituals “which are superstition open doors to the devil, and if at all “Devil, you open the crack, he gets into the kitchen, with serious spiritual and material consequences.”

“They are not harmless rites, they are an invitation for the evil one to enter, and he does not think twice, enters and takes possession of the house,” he added.

Although it could be considered “a politically correct act,” the priest warned that ultimately “they are superstitious, sinful, idolatrous acts, which bring disastrous consequences, because they are religious rituals that have Satan as their center, although they are presented as something harmless.”

David Ramos and Diego López Colín collaborated with this article.