Violence and kidnappings in Mexico upset Vatican

Mexico City: Decrying the violence that Mexicans are enduring, the Vatican has suggested excommunication as a possible punishment for drug traffickers, whose war with the government has led to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year.

But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of rebuke probably would have little effect on traffickers and killers who lack a religious conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, conceded.

Speaking to Latin American journalists before travelling to Mexico on Monday, Bertone said it was a "duty" to fight drug gangs, because their actions represent "the most hypocritical and terrible way of murdering the dignity and personality of today's youth".

"Certainly, excommunication is a very harsh deterrent that the church has used to deal with the most serious crimes in its history, from the very first centuries," Bertone said when asked if the censure would be appropriate in this case.

Excommunication bars a Catholic from receiving sacraments and participating in public worship.

"But I should observe that excommunication is a punishment that touches only those who have some form of ecclesiastical conscience, an ecclesiastical education," he added.

Alarmed

The Vatican, he said, is alarmed at the "disasters" of drug-fuelled violence, kidnappings and overall insecurity in Mexico.

He called on Catholics to pray for traffickers to have a change of heart.

Bertone, whose official title is Vatican secretary of state - the equivalent of prime minister to Pope Benedict XVI, will be in Mexico for the sixth World Meeting of Families church conference this week.

Within the "narco-culture" that surrounds the drug trade in Mexico, gangsters make use of a blend of Catholic observance mixed with superstition and even their own iconography.

For example, many revere the so-called saint of the narco-traffickers, a Robin Hood-type character named Jesus Malverde.