Maria Verza

At a recent service in the remote southern Mexican community of Simojovel, Catholic and Mayan symbolism mingled at the altar as the deacon — his wife beside him — read the gospel in his native Tsotsil and recalled Pope Francis' teachings: work together for human rights, justice and Mother Earth.

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that it is unconstitutional to punish abortion, unanimously annulling several provisions of a law from Coahuila — a state on the Texas border — that had made abortion a criminal act.

The Vatican's representative in Mexico said March 3 that four Catholic bishops had been referred to their superiors for alleged connections to cases of sexual abuse as part of the church's efforts to gather information about the possible cover up of abuse.

The Vatican is sending its top two sex crimes investigators to Mexico on a fact-finding and assistance mission as the Catholic hierarchy in the world's second-largest Catholic country begins to reckon with decades of clergy sex abuse and cover-up.

Yolanda Martínez's son had been sexually abused by a priest of the Legion of Christ, a disgraced religious order. But when she called Cardinal Valasio De Paolis — the Vatican official appointed by the pope to lead the Legion and to clean it up — to report the settlement the group was offering and to express her outrage, he laughed.

Ana Lucia Salazar's horrific story, which has been corroborated by other victims and the Legion of Christ itself, has sparked a new credibility crisis for the once-influential order, 10 years after the Holy See took it over after determining that its founder was a pedophile.