THE security situation in Mexico is “very difficult” as the World Cup approaches, the newly elected Anglican Archbishop of Mexico, the Most Revd Sally Sue Hernández, has warned.
She was delivering a keynote speech at last week’s annual conference of the Anglican mission agency USPG. The theme was “For Christ is our peace”.
The tournament, hosted by Mexico, Canada, and the United States, begins on Thursday. “The situation is very difficult, with challenges including the presence of drug cartels, forced disappearances, violence against girls and women, the exclusion of indigenous communities, and armed attacks to seize territory from communities that have been displaced from their lands, among others,” Archbishop Hernández said.
“While the World Cup will generate passion, and some economic activity, there will be no profound changes or answers to the true needs of the Mexican people.”
The Archbishop, who is the first woman Primate of Mexico, read the Gospel at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s installation (News, 25 March).
The USPG conference, at High Leigh Conference Centre, Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, explored the part played by the Church as an agent of “Just Peace” in the modern world, “and how we can follow in Christ’s footsteps as peacemakers in a world marked by violence and injustice”.
The Bishop of Willesden, the Rt Revd Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy led the Bible studies and outlined how peacebuilding “starts internally” before becoming “a lived reality”. “Peacebuilding is a dual movement: one that starts internally, as a spiritual practice, and then manifests in how we inhabit Christ faithfully,” he said. “Not just as a programme, but as a lived reality.”
Practical peacebuilding was explored in workshops on issues including reparative justice for transatlantic slavery, gender-based violence in Africa, and stories of resilience and reconciliation from Asia and the Middle East.
The director of Trinity Centre for Post-Conflict Justice, at Trinity College, Dublin, Dr Jude Lal FernandoI, was among the participants, alongside Anglican church leaders, theologians, church partners, and USPG supporters.
He warned that security concerns were increasingly being prioritised over communities’ basic needs, while hundreds of millions were still living in extreme poverty. “When space for peace and dialogue decreases, the space for violence and oppression increases, especially for women and children,” he said.
The general secretary of USPG, Canon Duncan Dormor, said: “As we get caught up in football fever at the World Cup in North America this summer, we must remember the lives being impacted by the situation in Mexico.
“It is almost always the poor who suffer the most, and it is within these communities that the Anglican Church of Mexico is standing up, speaking out, and taking action to address issues of deep injustice, conflict, and violence.”
He said of the conference: “This has been a profound and moving few days. We have heard of the work of Christian individuals and communities who have put themselves in positions of peril which takes great courage, and challenges each one of us.
“The world is changing. We must ask ourselves not ‘What does peace look like?’ but ‘What does a just peace look like?’ We must deepen our understanding and empathy for one another, because we all part of the same body and the same world.”