President Vicente Fox met Sunday with a Roman Catholic cardinal under investigation for allegations of money laundering in an apparent bid to calm anger and fear caused by his government's probe.
Last week, the Archdiocese of Guadalajara criticized federal authorities for agreeing to launch the investigation of Cardinal Juan Sandoval of Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city.
During a lunch at his ranch in Guanajuato state, Fox promised to respect Sandoval's rights, the president's office said in a statement.
But Fox also stressed that Mexico would not return to the practice of past centuries when church officials were exempt from the law in Mexico. The practice ended in the mid-1800s.
``In a brief private conversation, President Fox and Cardinal Sandoval agreed that it is very important that the investigation launched by the Justice Department of the cardinal and other people strictly respect their rights,'' the president's office said.
It added that ``in no way is this a case of allowing impunity or an attempt to re-establish special legal privileges.''
The Justice Department initiated the investigation based on a complaint filed by Jorge Carpizo, a former attorney general, alleging that Sandoval or his subordinates may have accepted donations from drug traffickers.
Carpizo has a long-running dispute with Sandoval over the investigation into the 1993 shooting death of Sandoval's predecessor, Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo.
Carpizo and federal investigators have concluded that feuding drug traffickers mistook Posadas Ocampo for a rival and shot him as he stepped out of his luxury car at Guadalajara's airport.
Sandoval has claimed that Carpizo, who headed the Justice Department at the time, and other officials covered up evidence that Posadas Ocampo was killed because he knew about top-level government involvement in drug trafficking.
Authorities are also investigating Sandoval's lawyer, a race track owner in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, and a federal congressman from Fox's National Action Party.
Fox, like most Mexicans, identifies himself as a Roman Catholic, and he has had friendlier relations with the church than any other president in Mexico's recent history, a period marked by bouts of anticlericalism.