After historic elections, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo will be the first woman to assume the presidency of Mexico, succeeding Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose “legacy” she promised to “save” at the close of her campaign, on December 29. May. Who is he, what does he think and what is his relationship with the Catholic Church?
Following the results of the vote held this June 2, the 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) — is the virtual winner of the presidential elections.
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The president advisor of the National Electoral Institute (INE), Guadalupe Taddei, reported in the first minutes of June 3 that, according to the results of the quick count, Sheinbaum leads the candidate Xóchitl Gálvez, from the Fuerza y Corazón coalition, which brings together the political groups National Action Party (PAN) by between 30 and 34 points. , Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
The quick count shows that Sheinbaum obtained between 58% and 60% of the votes, while Gálvez achieved between 26% and 28%. Jorge Álvarez Maynez, candidate of the Citizen Movement party, obtained between 9% and 10% of the votes.
If the results are made official in the coming days, Sheinbaum will assume the presidency of Mexico on October 1 of this year.
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, I congratulate through her X account (formerly Twitter) to the candidate for her virtual victory.
Who is Claudia Sheinbaum?
Born on June 24, 1962 in Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum comes from a Jewish family of Lithuanian and Bulgarian origin.
According to various national media, his paternal grandparents are Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Lithuania to Mexico in the 1920s. His mother’s parents, Annie Pardo, are also Sephardic Jews who arrived from Bulgaria in the 1940s, fleeing Nazi persecution. .
In statements To the American newspaper The New York Times, in 2020, Sheinbaum referred to his distance from Jewish religious practices: “Of course I know where I come from, but my parents were always atheists (…) I never belonged to the Jewish community, and we grew up “like a little bit away from that.”
Claudia Sheinbaum is a mother of two children and, since November 2023, she has been married to Jesús María Tarriba, a consulting professional in the financial industry.
She graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she graduated in Physics, after studying at the Faculty of Sciences.
In 2018, she became the first woman elected head of government of Mexico City, a position that catapulted her as the favorite for the 2024 elections, leading the “Together we make History” coalition, which integrates the MORENA parties—to which the current president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador—, the Labor Party (PT) and the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM).
Claudia Sheinbaum’s principles: What do you think about abortion and gender ideology?
In line with the principles of her party, MORENA, founded by López Obrador, Sheinbaum has assured her commitment to a progressive agenda that promotes, among other things, abortion and gender ideology.
MORENA define as an “anti-neoliberal and left-wing” party, and is committed to “fulfillment of its general obligations in terms of human rights, as well as with a gender perspective and taking into account intersectionality.”
At the beginning of her campaign, the candidate spread 100 appointments that she would assume if she won the presidency of Mexico, among which she assured to guarantee “access to women’s health throughout their life cycle, especially what refers to sexual and reproductive health.”
In different publications of international institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO)the so-called “sexual and reproductive health”, as well as the so-called “sexual and reproductive rights”, usually include the so-called “safe abortion”.
In 2022, when the United States Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade —who had legalized abortion throughout the country since 1973—, Sheinbaum declared that “it would be a setback” for the neighboring country to declare that practice, which he called “right,” illegal. In that sense, his then Secretary of Health, Oliva López Arellano, offered Mexico City for foreigners who wanted to have an abortion.
That year, when the so-called homosexual “marriage” was approved in the states of Guerrero and Tamaulipas, Sheinbaum celebrated: “Today the entire country advances in equal rights with the approval of equal marriage in Guerrero and Tamaulipas, I celebrate the display of will and the search for justice for all of both state Congresses. Love is love”.
Likewise, the former head of Government of Mexico City publicly condemned conversion therapies for homosexual people, considering them “from the inquisition,” and stating that these are measures “that do not correspond to a city of rights.”
Through her X account, the former head of Government of the Mexican capital shared, on December 12, 2023, an image in which he said he longed for the “strengthening of the rights of people of sexual diversity.”
“My dream is to continue fighting for people of sexual diversity, as I did in Mexico City,” he expressed in that publication.
What is Claudia Sheinbaum’s relationship with the Catholic Church?
Both Xóchitl Gálvez and Claudia Sheinbaum met in February of this year in individual private audiences with Pope Francis.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo announced through her social networks that their meeting “was an exceptional hour that I will never forget, with a simple and warm way that shows its greatness.”
“In addition to being the highest representative of the Catholic Church, the religion of the vast majority of my people, I have deep admiration for its humanist thought,” said the then presidential candidate.
In addition, Claudia Sheinbaum met twice with the bishops of Mexico while she was campaigning.
The first meeting was in March of this year, to sign the National Commitment to Peace, an initiative proposed by the Catholic Church to address the growing violence in the nation. The second meeting was in April, within the framework of the 116th Plenary Assembly of the Conference of the Mexican Episcopate (CEM).
On that occasion, the candidate expressed “her desire to maintain good relations with the Churches and, especially, with the Catholic Church with whom she has many similarities, especially with the thoughts of Pope Francis.”
In the final weeks of the election campaign, rumors circulated that, if she won the presidency, Claudia Sheinbaum would close Catholic temples, including the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Through your YouTube channel, Sheinbaum denied the rumors: “They say—just imagine the lie—that we are going to close churches when we win the presidency. We are going to win the presidency and we are not going to close any church, any temple. Our respect to all cults, all religions of our people. It is false that we are going to close any church.”
The “legacy” of López Obrador’s 6 years on abortion and gender ideology
During the six years of the presidency of the outgoing López Obrador, with initiatives promoted mainly by his party, abortion has been decriminalized up to 12 weeks of gestation in the states of Oaxaca, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Baja California, Colima, Guerrero, Baja California South, Quintana Roo and Aguascalientes. In Sinaloa, abortion was decriminalized up to 13 weeks of pregnancy.
In Mexico City – formerly the Federal District – abortion was decriminalized up to 12 weeks of gestation in 2007, when Marcelo Ebrard, today a member of MORENA and until a few months ago Secretary of Foreign Relations of the López Obrador administration, was head of Government. .
On May 17, 2019, five months after assuming power, López Obrador instituted what he called “national day for the fight against homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia and biphobia” in Mexico.
In May 2020, López Obrador’s then Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, encouraged the legal recognition of “the name and gender” of a child or adolescent who identifies as “trans.”
During these six years, from their social media accounts, the Mexican government and its secretariats (ministries) have celebrated the so-called gay “pride” month in June.
Diego López Colin
I am a graduate of Journalism at the Carlos Septién García School with experience in religious institutional communication. Since 2016 he has written for digital media and, since 2018, I have reported the most important news about Catholic events in Mexico for the EWTN news channel. He has been ACI Prensa correspondent in Mexico since 2023.