The leaders of the independence movement in Mexico were fiercely fought by royalist forces, who counted with the staunch support of the authorities of the Catholic Church.
Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the Mexican priest persecuted by the Inquisition. Painting of the 19th century.
Pope Francis has recently justified the Latin American independence movements of the twenty-first century. In his recent tour of the continent, which has the highest Catholic population in the entire world, Francis told the crowds, gathered to follow the mass he was officiating, that “the cry for Independence of Latin America […] is a cry stemming from the awareness of the lack of freedoms, of being exploited and looted”.
Something the Pope did not mention was how the system of lack of freedoms and looting previous to the independence struggles was built. At the end of the fifteenth century and during the sixteenth, his predecessors in the Papacy issued various bulls, under terms of concordat with successive Spanish and Portuguese monarchs, to create the Patronato regio (royal Patronage), by virtue of which Rome recognized the right of the Spanish monarchy to use for its own benefit all lands discovered, and under its dominion, in the New World, in exchange for the commitment by the Crown to Christianize the indigenous peoples.
The first part, the looting of riches, was a complete success, at the expense of the indigenous peoples of Latin America and Africans brought to the Americas alike, who were enslaved. The second part, the pretended Christianization, was not done in a way Christ would have, but through imposition and violence, as related by Bartolomé de las Casas in Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias1, as well as in his polemic with the imperial theologian Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in Valladolid (1550 – 1551).
Pope Pius VII, the 248th pope, reigned from March 14th, 1800 to July 20th, 1823. The process that brought Latin American nations to independence was unleashed during his Papacy.2 Pope Pius VII “in debt with the powers of the Holy Alliance, particularly with the Spanish monarch, preaches obedience to king Ferdinand and to 'American Spaniards', thus supporting with his authority royal absolutism”.3
In the case of Mexico, the leaders of the independence movement were fought fiercely by royalist forces, who had the steadfast support of Catholic authorities to delegitimize the movement, in which various priests took part of, siding with peoples' needs and demands. Pope Francis didn't say anything about all this.
Excommunication was the last step in a long and bloody process of stigmatization. The Catholic hierarchy of New Spain treated the rebel Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla even more viciously than usual. Today, as it happened a few years ago on the eve of the bicentennial of the independence, the ecclesiastic leadership demands that history be rewritten according to its whims. This leadership claims that Hidalgo, as well as José María Morelos y Pavón, died having been reconciled with the Church that excommunicated them.
In 2007 the Mexican Chamber of Deputies created a useless and absurd committee. It was commissioned to request that the Catholic Church lift the sentence of excommunication against father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Unwittingly -was it?- this request was turned around to whitewash the institution that used everything in its power to declare Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the forerunner of the Mexican independence movement, a heretic.
Norberto Rivera Carrera, who at the time was the archbishop of the Primate of Mexico, swiftly gave instructions to create the Commission of History of the Archdiocese of Mexico, to review the excommunication proceedings against priests Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos y Pavón, among others who enrolled in the quest for independence.
On October 18th, 2007, in a display of rare celerity, this commission submitted its conclusions. Gustavo Watson, who was in charge of the historical archives at the Basilica of Guadalupe, as well as at the Archdiocese, declared: “the sentence for this case was not widely known, but now is the time to bring to light what was already published. Hidalgo was excommunicated, but the excommunication was lifted the moment he confessed and repented. We can state this because we are in possession of the sentence”. It only took two hundred years to find the right moment.
If Hidalgo really repented, this would mean that, from the point of view of those who excommunicated him, the delegitimization of his ideals and those of the independence movement was right, since he was the one repenting, Ecclesia dixit, and not the priestly cast who punished him. Ergo, each and every one of the vicious accusations against him are still in force. Elementary, my dear (Gustavo) Watson.
It is also worthy to remember that Miguel Hidalgo suffered both military and inquisitorial proceedings. He was accused of being an enemy of the political regime and tried as a heretic by the Roman Catholic Church. In front of the interpretative juggling by Watson and the spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Mexico, Hugo Valdemar, one only needs to take into consideration the copious documentation existing that shows the persecution unleashed by the Catholic hierarchy at the time against the main rebel, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Hugo Valdemar, incidentally, requested in 2009 that textbooks distributed by the Department of Education say that Hidalgo died in the bosom of the Catholic Church.
The political/religious conglomerate of New Spain did everything in its power to impose a sentence that would make an example of the priest who, on September 16th, 1810, summoned the people to the uprising against Spanish domination.
One of the clergymen who reacted swiftly against this fight lead by Hidalgo was the Bishop of Michoacán, Manuel Abad y Queipo. On September 24th, 1810, he issued an edict excommunicating Miguel Hidalgo and all those who dared join his cause: “by virtue of the authority I have as appointed Bishop and Governor of this Bishopric, I declare that said D. Miguel Hidalgo, priest of Dolores, and his followers […] are disturbers of the public order, seducers of the people, sacrilegious and perjurers, who have incurred the greatest excommunication of canon law, Siquis Suadente Diabolo […]. I declare them excommunicated for life, and I forbid that anyone give them help, assistance or favor, under penalty of immediate, major excommunication incurrenda.4
The Bishop of Michoacán was not the only bishop who issued an excommunication against Hidalgo, other bishops in the country did the same. The terminology employed to justify this ecclesiastic punishment against the rebellious priest was categorical: “[...] May the Father who created man curse him; may the Son who suffered for us curse him; may the Holy Spirit poured out during baptism curse him; may the Holy Cross, from which Christ descended triumphantly on its enemies curse him; may Most Holy Mary, ever Virgin and Mother of God, curse him […]. May Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla be condemned, wherever he shall be, at home, in the field, in the forest, in the water or in church. Cursed be he in life and death. Cursed be all the faculties of his body. Cursed be he while eating or drinking, when hungry, thirsty, fasting, sleeping, sitting, stopped, working, resting or bleeding. Cursed be he inside and outside; cursed be his hair, his brain, his vertebrae, his temples, his cheeks, his jaw, his nose, his teeth and molars, his shoulders, his hands, fingers and toes. May he be condemned in his mouth, his chest, his heart, his bowels and his stomach. Cursed be his kidneys, his groin, his thighs, his genitalia, his hips, his legs, his feet and nails. Cursed be all his joints and articulations in all his members; from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet. May the Son of the living God, in all his majesty, curse him, and the heavens and all the powers that move them rise against him, curse him and condemn him, lest he repent and do penance. Amen, so be it. Amen.5
A few weeks after Hidalgo issued his call upon the people, the Inquisition summoned the rebel to present himself before it. In an edict, which was to be displayed in all churches, he was considered a deprave, gone astray from the doctrine, fornicator, haughty, libertine, unfaithful, hypocrite, iniquitous, enemy of God, monster, apostate, pimp (“you made a covenant with your concubine, so she would find you women with whom to fornicate, and that for the same purpose you wound find her men”) and, how awful! Lutheran: “you adopt the doctrine of Luther in relation to the godly Eucharist, and to confession, negating thus the authenticity of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, stating that the doctrine in the Gospel on this this sacrament is not well understood, because we believe in the existence of Jesus Christ in it”. That is, according to his judges, Hidalgo didn't believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation, didn't believe that the Communion really contained the body and blood of Christ. Although Hidalgo was accused of being Lutheran, he was not.
Hidalgo appeared before the Inquisition after being captured, on March 21st, 1811. Some of his civilian comrades were executed by firing squad before he was.
Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's ecclesiastical condition made it necessary that, before he could be sent to the execution wall, he were stripped of priesthood. The Inquisition did that with pleasure, excommunicating him and handing him over to civil justice. A justice which, in turn, was subject to the ecclesiastic authorities. After excommunication, Hidalgo was sent to the dungeons, from where he was only taken out to appear before his ecclesiastic judges, who subjected him to infamous proceedings.
The ecclesiastic degradation of Hidalgo took place on July 29th, 1811, when “kneeling, […] proceeded to strip him of all the vestments of his order, starting by the last, and going down gradually until the first in the way prescribed by the Roman Pontiff”.6 He was executed by firing squad the next morning, at seven o'clock.
After his execution, his corpse was exhibited in the public square; in the afternoon, his corpse was beheaded, and his head was put in a box full of salt, then sent to be hung, together with those of Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama and Mariano Jiménez, in Alhóndiga de Granaditas, Guanajuato.
His inquisitors forced father Hidalgo to put his signature to the retraction of his mistakes. This is the base upon which those who affirm that he died having reconciled with the Catholic Church make their case. His retraction was pulled out through anathema and torture. What does Pope Francis think about all of this?
1 Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, 1552.
2 Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, A History of the Popes, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2001, p. 394.
3 Rosa María Martínez de Codes, La Iglesia Católica en la América independiente, siglo XIX, Editorial MAPFRE, Madrid, 1992, pp. 31-32.
4 Laura Campos, https://lauracampos.wordpress.com/hidalgo-murio-excomulgado/
5 See note 4.
6 Luis González Obregón, Los procesos militar e inquisitorial del padre Hidalgo, Ediciones Fuente Cultura, México, 1953, p. 128.
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