A massive Mexican prelate who resembles in face the late, fundamentalist, teetotaling William Jennings Bryan, strode into the Vatican, last week, and climbed beamingly upstairs for a two-hour audience with The Most Blessed Father, Achilla Ambrogio Damiano Ratti, Pope Pius XL The man from Mexico, Archbishop Leopoldo Ruiz y Flores, handed solemnly to the Supreme Pontiff a voluminous report signed by the dignitaries of the Mexican Episcopate, who are now in exile at San Antonio, Texas. The report states, as Archbishop Ruiz later revealed, that there has never been a more favorable time than the present to harmonize the strained relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Government of Mexico.
Since His Holiness has repeatedly denounced the Mexican Administration for carrying on "a real and true persecution of Catholics," and since Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles has retorted with disparaging references to "the grunts of the Pope," it was major news last week that Roman Catholics believe the situation to have altered radically. Clearly they pin this belief on the fact that Mexico is on the eve of a presidential election with only one candidate in the field—onetime President Alvaro Obregon. Presumably his inauguration is assured for next December, and last week Prelate Ruiz hinted broadly that he had received assurances from President-Apparent Obregon that better times are coming to Mexican Roman Catholics.
Quarrel. As everyone knows the quarrel of the Holy See with President Calles has resulted from his enforcement of anti-religious clauses in the Mexican Constitution which were not enforced during the last presidency (1920-24) of General Obregon or previously. The core of the quarrel is President Calles' enforcement decree of July 19, 1926, authorizing the police to prevent priests from officiating until they register with the Mexican authorities. Straightway this decree was stigmatized by the Mexican Episcopate as an implied setting of the State above the Pope, and all Roman Catholic priests have refused to be registered. From this apparently trifling but actually fundamental disagreement others have venomously sprung, resulting in the expulsion of the Prelates from Mexico, the suspension of service in Mexican churches, and the actual fomentation of civil war by militantly religious elements in the State of Jalisco.
Calles' Attitude. If General Obregon has made overtures to the Holy See he has done so only after consultation with his good & close friend President Calles. Last week President Calles made it abundantly clear that his own position has altered by not one jot or tittle. Spoke to correspondents the President's halfbrother, Senor Arturo M. Elias, Mexican Consul-General in New York, suave, worldly and at times sarcastic.
Said he: "Priests conduct weddings; they get money for it. Priests conduct funerals; they get money for it. They conduct various other sorts of services and they get money for them. Consequently the State must know who these priests are. It must register them. We must know who are the responsible heads of their churches. We are not asking anything outrageous—merely obeyance of our law."