By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez
A few days ago we learned about the Father Alberto Anguiano García resigned from the rectorship of the Pontifical University of Mexico, in the second year of his second term as rector, as a protest against the “workplace harassment and institutional violence” he suffered at the hands of the Vatican Curia and the authorities of that ecclesiastical university, which has been in existence for barely forty years.
The reasons given by the rector for his unilateral removal from office, an act that led to his resignation, are revealing, as they reveal a systemic problem in ecclesiastical institutions, which frequently act as if they had their own jurisdiction, impervious to civil jurisdiction, with labor rights at stake, as well as to public opinion in modern societies.
While, like every educational institution in Mexico, the UPM is subject to civil law regarding labor and education, the procedures in this case reveal a systemic violence that must be addressed in order to dismantle and make way for other methods of action, in keeping with the Gospel and the freedom of individuals, especially when it concerns the common good that education represents. Even more urgently, we must reflect and act when it concerns a religious institution destined to communicate the contents of Christian revelation and the tradition that constantly arises from it. Ultimately, this is a matter of addressing the credibility crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in these dire days.
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I met Father Alberto as a student at the University of Madrid thirty years ago, when he was pursuing a postgraduate degree in theology in 1995, during a course I taught on Emmanuel Levinas and his concept of revelation rooted in the Hebrew tradition and in dialogue with "the philosophy spoken in Greek." He was the most brilliant student of those generations, not only for his high academic standing, but also for his theological ability to update the theological knowledge of the great Christian tradition in the midst of contemporary questions arising from science, psychoanalysis, and the challenges of secular culture.
Already as rector, his first term began in 2021 It was marked by a clear project to modernize the university, both in its curricula and in the urgent strategic planning to open up to new disciplines in the civil world and not be limited solely to the clerical sphere. Ecclesiastical faculties had to overcome their ostracism and enter into dialogue with other civil disciplines. Furthermore, according to the diagnosis, it was essential to promote institutional efficiency that would make a domestic institution viable in its vision, uses, and customs, to make it a credible interlocutor in the academic and ecclesial context, both nationally and internationally.
But internal resistance seems to have created a climate of aversion to these reforms which, due to the typical rivalry of any group protecting its interests, deployed a mechanism of expulsion against its main promoter. In order to maintain the unanimity of "all against one," proceeding like a true mimetic contagion, a typical scapegoat process was brewing. It was thought that by expelling the person singled out as the source of the collective evil from the group, the evil would be expelled from the institution, which would regain its tranquility once purified of its poison. As we can see in the engraving by Iván Gardea that accompanies this reflection (The Plot of Engraving), the talented Mexican engraver managed to masterfully capture this mechanism of rivalry, contagion and collective lynching to delineate with the force of his strokes the mimetic desire that gives rise to human culture based on sacrifices since we have historical memory as a human species.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how the crisis is resolved, we know that the victimizing mechanism is the satanic lie that hides "things hidden since the foundation of the world," as René Girard said (Things hidden since the foundation of the world) quoting the Gospel of Matthew: “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables, and will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world” (Matthew 13:35). The parables of the Reign of God that Jesus told in Galilee evoked ways to overcome the violence that lurks in the human heart precisely as a mimetic desire that engenders rivalry and fratricide. If the community involved does not internally dismantle the mechanism of rivalry and hatred, the poison will continue to infect its internal relationships and will continue to create new processes of self-protection, unanimity of all against one, expulsion and lies, producing new victims.
From this fund anthropological that appears as a cause systemic Of the institutional violence suffered by Father Alberto, what is important now is to emphasize the need for accountability from ecclesiastical institutions, both internally and externally. Moving forward, a process of collective healing of memory will be necessary, with justice and truth first for the victims, and with accountability for the perpetrators.
Unfortunately, given the prevailing clericalism, as a structure systemic which is perpetuated precisely by making victims invisible, it is necessary to bring this institutional distortion into the public sphere so that paths of memory can emerge, with justice and truth, that restore the scant credibility of a university institution founded in 1982 to serve the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico and Mexican society as a whole.
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The institutional complicity that led to Father Alberto's expulsion is similar to other instances of clerical violence in today's world.
Such systemic clerical violence can be traced to similar crises, such as that of the Roman Catholic Church in Chile, which has produced victims of sexual abuse committed by clergy against adult women and minors for half a century. They have been subjected for decades to systemic psychological, sexual, and spiritual violence, which has left its mark on the victims and has protected the perpetrators of these crimes from impunity, protected by what Rita Segato (The war against women) called it "the masculinity pact." There's talk of reparation, but it revictimizes the victims and leaves no substantial changes in institutional life such as schools, religious congregations, parishes, and dioceses.
A brilliant doctoral thesis in progress on this topic, prepared by Soledad del Villar Tagle (Abuses in the Church. Concilium. International Journal of Theology, (402)), will document with compelling testimonies and a rigorous interdisciplinary analysis, this abuse of clerical power that requires, of course, restorative justice for victims and survivors, along with a new theology of the Church. This feminist theology from women survivors of sexual and spiritual abuse by clergy will shed light on promoting the necessary changes to overcome this systemic violence characteristic of patriarchy, in its version of clericalism, as a religious expression of the war against women.
The feminist theology that emerges from the abuse crisis proposes a spirituality that springs from the wounds of Christ's wounded social body, going beyond pious considerations that venerate the wounds of the Crucified One but render invisible the victims of yesterday and today, desecrated in their bodies, minds, and souls by this systemic clerical violence.
Pope Francis' invitation to live a Holy Year in 2025 (Do not confuse. Bull of Invocation of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025) in order to learn to be pilgrims of hope in times of despair, addresses the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout the year, Pope Leo XIV has continued this initiative, particularly calling young people to be part of this journey of conversion to sow hope in today's world.
But these calls will only make sense if they are rooted in attentive listening to survivors of any systemic violence, including ecclesiastical violence, which unfortunately continues to wield its predatory power as a religious caste of clericalism, unsustainable in our times.
Mexico City, July 26, 2025
