• CODES: Mexico’s powerful Catholic Bishop’s Conference demanded Tuesday for state government’s across the country to eliminate statutes of limitations for sexual abuse against minors in order to effectively punish those credibly accused of these crimes.
• WOUNDS: “The wounds never prescribe. On behalf of the Bishops of Mexico, we want to ask that there is no prescription of this crime. It’s not enough for the Catholic Church -through a canonical process- to expel those guilty from the clergy”, said Archbishop Rogelio Cabrera of Monterrey.
• REFORM: Governed under different 31 state criminal codes across Mexico, statutes of limitations for sexual abuse against minors are no longer the law of the land in several states including Campeche, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Oaxaca and Quintana Roo; yet, they still remain in others.
• INVESTIGATIONS: During its press conference this week, the Mexican Catholic Bishops Conference said that so far it has investigated a total of 426 priests during the past 10 years. Of these cases, 271 have to do with sex abuse and 155 had been referred to prosecutors.
