This Advent season brings with it the new liturgical period that invites the Catholic Church to vigilance and hope. Four Sundays of preparation for Christmas, symbolized by the purple color of penance and the crown of four candles representing love, peace, joy, and faith, but they are not just lights and colors. It is a call to remember Christ's humble coming in Bethlehem, to live his presence in the now, and to long for his glorious return at the end of times.
However, in Mexico, this waiting brings a critical urgency, while the candles are lit, Catholic faith is progressively fading, drowned by secularization and violated by systematic attacks on religious freedom. Advent is an antidote against the spiritual detriment that threatens to devour the soul of a Catholic and Guadalupan nation.
The erosion of Catholic faith in Mexico is an alarming fact. According to the 2020 Census from INEGI, only 72% of the population adheres to institutional Catholicism, a drastic drop from 96% in previous censuses, with an accelerated decline between 2000 and 2020. A recent UNAM study estimates 98 million Catholics, but the growth of Protestants and Evangelicals—who already represent 11.2%—reveals a massive exodus.
78% of Mexicans declare themselves Catholic, but many do so «out of custom or social event», not out of conviction and way of life. Curiously, women, historically guardians of tradition, lead this desertion, for various reasons, from clerical scandals, a doctrine perceived as rigid in the face of modern dilemmas—abortion, same-sex marriages—and the rise of a diverse spirituality without intermediaries amplifying a light Catholicism, diluted in memes and superficial syncretisms. This is not just a numerical crisis; it is an existential void that leaves millions orphaned of transcendence in a Mexico battered by violence and inequality.
To this erosion is added a direct offensive against religious freedom, which the 2025 World Religious Freedom Report by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) qualifies as «discrimination» for Mexico. In 62 countries these rights are gravely violated and Mexico stands out for the «constant deterioration of security» due to organized crime, impunity, and corruption. Organizations like the Catholic Multimedia Center have denounced social degradation in states like Guerrero or Michoacán, where the narco extorts parishes and imposes its control over processions and patron saint festivals, turning worship spaces into places of siege and massacres.
In this Advent, the contrast is lacerating: while the liturgical world urges us to conversion and light, Mexico sinks into spiritual darkness. The erosion of faith is not inevitable and it is also fair to do a self-critical examination: the Church seems disconnected from those spiritual needs of the peripheries with a passive laity in the face of the siege.
However, Advent reminds us that history does not culminate in defeat. Christ will return, as the Apocalypse prophesies, to judge with justice and restore all creation. This parousia is not escapism, it is action. Mexican Catholics must light candles and consciences, renew catechesis with boldness, denounce violations before international forums and forge an incarnated faith that dialogues with modernity without laying down the essence of Christianity.
The Lord is coming. May this Advent not be lament, but leaven. May hope dispel the erosion, defeat the violations and reactivate a Mexico of brave believers. Only thus, in active vigil, will we be ready for his return. The Advent wreath burns. ¡May it illuminate our path to redemption!
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