One priest for every 33,000 Catholics, by law

ROME, September 29, 1932 AD — In Mexico, a priest was not allowed to work as a priest without a permit from the government. A law in Mexico’s Constitution let each state decide how many priests it would allow. It counted priests who served in people’s homes as well as those in churches. The bishops wanted the Church, not the state governors, to decide which priest served where. But the governments held the permits.

Pope Pius XI wrote that the government was using that power to remove the priests and the bishops “gradually from the Republic.” He wrote it in an encyclical to Mexico’s bishops. He signed it at St. Peter’s in Rome on September 29, 1932 AD.

The fight had started in 1926 AD. That year the government began enforcing the law with heavy punishments. The Church protested “in the most solemn manner.” The bishops ordered that no public services be held in any church. Then nearly all of the bishops were forced to leave the country.

Priests went on giving the sacraments “amid a thousand dangers and at the risk of their lives.” Many Catholics went through great hardship to help them. Many others took up arms, in a rising called the Cristero war.

Sahuayo is a town in the Mexican state of Michoacán. A boy from Sahuayo, Saint José Sánchez del Río, carried the Cristeros’ flag. On the night of February 10, 1928 AD, government soldiers took him into the Sahuayo graveyard. He was fourteen, and he would not give up his faith.

At the grave, an officer asked him what message he had for his father. St. José Sánchez del Río answered: “nos veremos en el cielo. ¡Viva Cristo Rey! ¡Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!” (we will see each other in heaven. Long live Christ the King! Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!). Then the soldiers shot him dead.

On June 21, 1929 AD, Mexico’s president and Archbishop Leopoldo Ruiz y Flores settled the fight between the government and the Church. Each man made a public statement. The president promised that no priest would go on the government’s list unless his bishop had chosen him. The churches opened again.

Pope Pius XI agreed to the churches opening again because of the president’s promise. But he wrote that agreeing had never meant accepting Mexico’s laws on worship. It had not meant dropping his protest against them either.

Three years of broken promises

In his 1932 AD letter, Pope Pius XI wrote that those promises had not been kept. Bishops, priests and other Catholics had gone on being punished and put in prison. Some bishops forced out of Mexico were still not allowed back. Other bishops had been forced out since. Some governors decided which buildings and which area a priest with a permit could work in.

Mexico’s own Constitution said the number of priests had to match “the religious needs of the faithful and of the locality.” Pope Pius XI set that beside what three states had actually allowed. In Michoacán, where St. José Sánchez del Río had died, it was one priest for every 33,000 Catholics. In Chiapas it was one for every 60,000. In Veracruz it was one priest for every 100,000.

Pope Pius XI wrote: “Everyone can see whether it is possible with such restrictions to administer the Sacraments to so many people, scattered for the most part over a vast territory.”

Within days, Mexico’s president answered. By then the president was Abelardo L. Rodríguez. President Rodríguez objected to what he called the Church’s “insolent, defiant attitude.” He warned that if it went on, he would turn the churches into schools and shops.

Archbishop Ruiz y Flores now spoke for the Pope in Mexico. He answered that he hoped the president would read the whole letter and find it “pacific and patriotic”: peaceful, and loyal to Mexico.