In a new chapter regarding the crisis at the Basilica of Guadalupe, on January 1, the Archbishop of Mexico, Carlos Aguiar Retes, granted faculties to two canons of the chapter of the Marian shrine.
Before these appointments, on December 25, Aguiar Retes gave important responsibilities to Canon Martín Muñoz López, former missionary of mercy during the time of Pope Francis, to serve as vicar general, moderator of the archdiocesan curia, and companion to the IV and VIII pastoral zones, in addition to accompanying the metropolitan chapter. All of those had been in the hands of Bishop Salvador González Morales, now the new pastor of Cancún-Chetumal, who will assume the position next February.
Unprecedented move for a canon who, commonly, only exercise their office in pastoral responsibilities within the chapter, but now, they also reveal how the archbishop’s calculations tend to “deactivate” a crisis that has not had a definitive solution.
For Msgr. Martín Muñoz, a well-known priest, prudent, with good dialogue accepted and of full archdiocesan identity, assuming a curial and bureaucratic position could anticipate his entry into a leading role in an eventual archiepiscopal succession as a facilitating hinge in a handover-reception to the next archbishop, but he knows, without a doubt, the series of internal complications, now not only in the Guadalupan chapter, but also at the curial level with not a few complex situations without overlooking the relations with the metropolitan chapter that his predecessor, the Bishop of Cancún-Chetumal, knew how to keep under control in the absence of the Archbishop of Mexico who, in practice, abandoned his pastoral presence in the cathedral to settle in the National Shrine of Guadalupe.
In the chapter, Martín Muñoz was penitentiary and exorcist and this sparked another round of appointments. Little publicized due to the New Year period that submerges in an informational impasse, at the beginning of the Mass for the World Day of Peace and the solemnity of Saint Mary, Mother of God, the canon archpriest and vice-rector of the Basilica, on behalf of the chapter, thanked that the archbishop set his eyes on that venerable collegiate body to choose two other canons to grant those “supernatural” faculties, one of them was Msgr. Édgar Alan Valtierra López, recently incorporated into the chapter in July 2024, as canon penitentiary.
Valtierra López will have in his power faculties that, in the spiritual realm, are no small thing. As canon law states, he will have, by virtue of the office, “the ordinary, non-delegable faculty to absolve in the sacramental forum from the latae sententiae censures that are neither declared nor reserved to the Holy See, even with regard to those who are in the diocese without belonging to it, and with regard to the diocesans, even outside the territory of the same.” What does that mean? In practice, he will be the specialist in the sacrament of confession by delegation to absolve grave sins reserved to the bishop and to lift ecclesiastical censures. This is no small thing. Now, Édgar Valtierra will not only handle ecumenical relations with other religious groups, he will also have in his hands the keys to “bind and loose, to absolve and forgive.”
The other appointment is that of exorcist falling to Canon Daniel Villalobos Ortiz. Like his colleague Alan Valtierra, he arrived at the Basilica in July 2024. We know what this office implies and its peculiar role in the Church, in an authentic ministry of liberation that cannot be performed by any improviser. As Church law affirms: “No one may perform exorcisms over possessed persons unless the Ordinary of the place has granted a special and express license for it. It also determines that this license may only be granted by the Ordinary of the place to a pious, learned, prudent presbyter with integrity of life. Consequently, Bishops are invited to urge the observance of such precepts,” a task that is anything but simple.
These designations are not something common and ordinary. They tend to be a valve that releases some of the pressure in the absence of Rector Efraín Hernández under canonical investigation and the crisis it has provoked; effectively, with important implications for the life of the archdiocese and with supernatural consequences to free from the influence of the Enemy all the evil that insists on working in the Church of Christ.