Mexico is a country where 83.9 percent of the people are Catholic, it is logical to think that the visit of the highest representative of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, would be a reason to celebrate and to roll out the red carpet. However, many citizens, Catholics and non-Catholics, protested the decision to bring the Pope.

The unhappy citizens have good reasons to complain about the Pope’s visits. For example in Mexico the government is secular, without any religious preference; however, this was meaningless to the Mexican Government that used more than $126 million of public funds. The victims of sexual abuse by the priest Marcial Maciel Degollado expected a reunion with the pontiff, but he denied it claiming the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize the victims of this crime. Finally in a country close to the presidential elections the Pope’s visit was a populist political movement made by the current administration, the National Action Party, expecting to raise polling numbers.

In 1857 Benito Juarez, the first native president of Mexico, established a secular government. With this law President Juarez wanted to respect all the religions in Mexico and expected the Catholic Church to not have any kind of power in government decisions. However, during the National Action Party administration of the most conservative party in Mexico has showed its clear preference toward the Catholic religion. The right-wing party has made decisions with clear Catholic influence, like the abortion prohibition, the denial of same-sex marriage and the decision to spend a big part of the public budget on the Pope’s visit.

The protesters emerged through the Aztec territory with reasonable arguments. They claimed that the government shouldn’t use public funds to bring the Pope because this was a clear infraction against the secular government. There are more tangible and important issues to fix in Mexico, like the increasing violence and the bankruptcy of several Mexican states. In the end, the Pope’s visit happened, and for two short days the Mexican citizens were happy to see the highest representative of the Catholic Church.

Pope’s visit wasn’t just expected by millions of Mexican Catholics, the victims of sexual abuse by deceased priest, Degollado, also expected him. Degollado founder of the Catholic organization, the Legion of Christ, was accused of pedophilia while he was the head of the Legion of Christ, but the legal process was never completed by the judicial system. Even though Degollado was removed as a minister of the Catholic Church in 2006, he never spent a day in jail for his crimes.

The victims expected a formal reunion with the Pope because they wanted a compensation or at least a formal apology from the representative of the institution, but Bishop Carlos Aguilar declared that the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize Degollado’s victims. For that reason the Pope couldn’t give them a proper meeting and the victims were indignant and furious. They strongly believed that the Pope, a representative of one of the most ancient and supposedly generous and honest institutions on the planet, would have the courage to accept the mistakes of his priest.

José Barba, one of the victims, published in the press that the Catholic Church had the opportunity to accept the truth, but they chose to ignore them and keep hiding the fact.

The current administration claims they didn’t use the Papal visit as a campaign movement, but their actions say the opposite. It was clear that the National Action Party wanted to be recognized as the mastermind behind the Pope’s visit. First, they chose Guanajuato for the visit because it is a city that sympathizes with the conservative party. Second, they spent millions of pesos in the maintenance of the city, logistics and security in order to receive the pontiff. Finally, they showed off to the entire nation that they were capable of keeping their citizens happy.

It is true that the Pope’s visit made a lot of people happy and millions of Mexican Catholics were grateful. However, the reality is that the Mexican people paid $126 million pesos for seeing the Pope waving to the crowd in his Pope mobile, behind thousands of people and security fences.