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Homespun Cotton. "I take ideas from others," says Méndez Arceo. "I must enrich myself from others." But he adds touches of his own. For liturgical ceremonies, he wears only homespun cotton vestments and carries a plain wooden shepherd's crook; otherwise he just wears a baggy black clerical suit on his 6-ft. 2 in. frame, unembellished by either a pectoral cross or episcopal ring. His book-cluttered residence is staffed only by volunteer students; nearby nuns send in his meals. He spends much of the time each week rocketing around the dusty roads of his diocese in a little Opel, saying Mass in homes of poor villagers. Méndez Arceo even calls himself a Zapatista, after the area's favorite native son, Peasant Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.
Don Sergio's enthusiasm spills over to his priests. Regional groups of priests meet voluntarily every week to discuss sermon topics and common solutions to pressing problems; all of the diocese's 100 priests meet twice monthly to discuss similar issues with Méndez Arceo himself. The meetings are characteristically free: last spring some of the priests publicly criticized the Mexican hierarchy for dragging its feet on putting into practice the reforms of Vatican II.
The bishop himself—usually an affable, conciliatory man who speaks kindly of his conservative peers—can also be outspoken. At Vatican II, he defended psychoanalysis, in obvious sympathy with Lemercier's monastery. Last May he journeyed to Rome to plead the case for CIDOC and former Monsignor Illich, who had resigned the active ministry after an inquisitorial Vatican proceeding (TIME, Feb. 14). The ban has since been modified, and priests and nuns may study at Illich's center as long as their superiors monitor their progress.
No Idleness. Somehow, everyone stays a part of the Catholic community in Cuernavaca. Gregoire Lemercier and most of his monks are now laymen, operating a psychoanalytic center near the old monastery grounds. Their elegant religious art is still sold on the cathedral grounds, and Lemercier, now married, is still close to the bishop. Ivan Illich's center, legally a secular institution, is now secular in mood as well, and currently has a record enrollment of more than 600, including many non-Catholics. Méndez Arceo still speaks warmly and publicly of Illich's "participation in Cuernavaca's Christian community."
A clue to the success of Don Sergio's all-embracing pastorate may lie in the work of a protege, Father William Bryce Wasson. Wasson missed ordination in the U.S. because of poor health, came to Cuernavaca to recuperate, and was ordained by Méndez Arceo. Today he presides over a remarkable orphanage that Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm recently praised as "really rare—an institution that has happy orphans." The secret, says Fromm, is that each of Wasson's 900 orphans knows "he will not be expelled or abandoned for any reason"—yet at the same time he is "expected to contribute, not to fall into idleness."