Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, Primate Archbishop of Mexico, has informed the chapter of the Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe of the reinstatement of Monsignor Efraín Hernández Díaz as rector of the shrine and episcopal vicar of the first pastoral zone of the archdiocese. The decision, conveyed verbally in an internal meeting without any subsequent public statement, restores to Hernández Díaz the functions from which he was removed by decree 817/2025, signed by Aguiar himself on September 20 of last year.
The formula used by the cardinal before the canons, according to the recording accessed by InfoVaticana, is deliberately terse: “having concluded these processes of the audit carried out by the firm Deloitte and by the ecclesiastical tribunal of our archdiocese, and there being no cause preventing it, Monsignor Efraín Hernández Díaz will resume his function as rector as of today.” Aguiar does not state that Hernández Díaz has been exonerated, nor does he detail the conclusions of the external audit, nor specify the formal outcome of the prior canonical investigation IP 17/2025, opened on October 3, 2025, by the judicial vicar, Auxiliary Bishop Andrés Luis García Jasso. The wording merely notes that there is no formal impediment to his return to the post.
The canonical investigation was initiated following an unprecedented complaint filed in September 2025 by the Guadalupe chapter itself, which sent Aguiar a formal letter outlining what its members considered possible violations of canon law in the pastoral and administrative management of the Basilica. The procedure included questioning of the canons. Hernández Díaz, in addition to being rector, had served as treasurer of the Archdiocese of Mexico from November 2018 to November 2023, during which he managed the resources of the world’s most visited Marian shrine, with an estimated annual influx of twelve million pilgrims. To the administrative irregularities cited by the chapter were added, in recent months of Mexican media coverage, published accusations regarding the donation of two luxury vehicles to Aguiar Retes himself, without either party having publicly responded.
In the same meeting, Aguiar informed the canons that the decision had been communicated to Pope Leo XIV and, through Apostolic Nuncio Joseph Spiteri, to the competent authorities of the Roman Curia. “I mentioned it to Pope Leo when I told him a bit about the conflicts we had here,” the cardinal stated, positioning the pontiff as an informed recipient of the maneuver. Neither the Holy See nor the nunciature in Mexico has issued any public statement on the case.
The cardinal’s intervention also included an implicit acknowledgment of the archdiocese’s structural situation: economic difficulties that will require merging parishes previously served by different priests, a sustained decline in vocations, and the impossibility of filling the eighteen positions on the Guadalupe chapter with diocesan clergy, which has led Aguiar to open the capitular body to priests from other dioceses. The replacement of the Primate Archbishop himself, who has already reached the canonical age for submitting his resignation, is considered imminent in Mexican ecclesiastical circles.
The reinstatement of Hernández Díaz thus occurs in the final stretch of Aguiar Retes’s Mexican pontificate and a few months before the 2025 Guadalupe feast, during which the rector remained absent and the Eucharistic celebration was presided over by Vice-Rector Gerardo Pérez Gómez. Neither the decree ending the prior investigation IP 17/2025 nor the audit report prepared by Deloitte has been made public by the Primate Archdiocese of Mexico.