MEXICO CITY - The administration of President Vicente Fox has drawn up proposals to lift a decades-old ban of ownership of media outlets by religious groups, an official confirmed Friday.
The move would mark a further step in liberalizing the often harsh anti-clerical laws Mexico enacted in the 1920s, after nearly a century of struggle between civilian governments and powerful Roman Catholic clergy.
Assistant Interior Secretary Javier Moctezuma confirmed press accounts that the government is considering requests by church groups that they be allowed to own media, such as television or radio stations. Ownership of newspapers would apparently remain off limits to church groups.
Moctezuma stressed the proposal has not yet been formalized. It's final version may also give priests the right to minister to those who so desire in state-run hospitals and jails, and formalize the right of government officials to attend religious services on their own time.
In 1992, the Mexican government restored relations with the Vatican after a 125-year break and repealed laws that forbade wearing clerical garb in public and denied churches the right to own property.
Those rules — often broken in practice — were among the world's most draconian anti-religion laws. They were passed to rein in a church that for centuries had ruled as part of the colonial power structure, owned much of Mexico's land and allied itself with foreign invaders and domestic dictators.
Most Mexicans consider themselves at least nominally Roman Catholic, and while some opposition leaders supported the proposal, some leftists objected to it, citing concerns that the Catholic church could seek to regain its old power.
"This will only serve to guarantee an anachronistic and hegemonic power for the Roman Catholic Church," the newspaper La Jornada said in a Friday editorial.