A Protestant pastor and his family have been exiled from a village in Mexico after he refused to wish to a saint during a Catholic ceremony.
Last November Pastor Mariano Velásquez Martínez was appointed to the position of “mayordomo” in the local people of Santiago Malacatepec in Oaxaca State. The position is one in every of stewardship and involves leading a conventional Roman Catholic festival.
Pastor Velásquez Martínez said that he accepted the position on the understanding that his only role within the festival can be to supply the flowers and candles.
However, when the day of the festival got here on 15 January, a fellow mayordomo told Pastor Velásquez Martínez not only to light the candles, but to kneel and pray to a picture of Saint James.
Despite Pastor Velásquez Martínez saying that it had been agreed that he wouldn’t be required to take such motion, the opposite mayordomo complained to the leadership of the village.
Pastor Velásquez Martínez was reportedly then sure with a rope and told he was being expelled from the village, all in front of a crowd of about 180 men.
The pastor says he was forced into signing a document that expelled him from the community, adding that he was not given a replica. He, his wife and three-month-old baby at the moment are living with relatives in Oaxaca City.
Concerningly, this shouldn’t be the primary time an incident equivalent to this has occurred within the region. Pastor Velásquez Martínez has led the small Iglesia Camino Nuevo y Vivo (New and Living Way Church) since 2023, when the previous pastor was also forcibly displaced.
Porfirio Flores Zúñiga, a lawyer and representative of the Fellowship of Pastors, has demanded that the Attorney General’s Office and the Secretary of Government of Oaxaca State use the Forced Displacement Law against those that forced Pastor Velásquez Martínez and his family out.
Under the law, those guilty of forcibly displacing people in Oaxaca state will be punished by as much as 18 years in prison.
Anna Lee Stangl, director of advocacy at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said, ”The arbitrary detention of Pastor Mariano Velásquez Martínez and the next forced displacement of him and his family is unconscionable.
“His case demonstrates how each state and federal governments are failing to satisfy not only their international human rights obligations, but, much more fundamentally, their commitments to uphold basic rights in Mexico’s own structure and laws.
“This case is unfortunately not unique, and it’s past time that the Mexican government, at every level, implements policies to uphold freedom of faith or belief for all, including in communities governed under Uses and Customs.
“We call on the federal government of Oaxaca to take swift motion to carry those accountable for the forced displacement of this family to account under the law, and to take steps to make it clear that freedom of faith or belief should be upheld for all.”
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