Correspondence of Don Sergio

Abstract

Sergio Méndez Arceo, bishop of Cuernavaca seventh, spent the most intense years of the reform of the Catholic Church. Consecrated bishop in 1952 by Pope Pius XII, Don Sergio, as everyone called him, was born in Tlalpan, Mexico City, coming from a Catholic family of Michoacan. He was carrying a conservative thought and also an intellectual, scholar of theology and critical of prevailing liturgical forms. In that issue was a reformer, and a bold manner. His first act as bishop, which sparked fierce controversy and garnered an angry rejection but also praise surprised, was the remodeling of the Cathedral of Cuernavaca. It was a sixteenth century convent church that had been altered and architectural overlays at different times, as well as paintings above the original frescoes. The architectural design, original work of Fray Gabriel Chavez de la Mora, represented a major transformation. The proposal was in the opposite direction of popular religiosity and claimed the centrality of Christ, the Church always present in speech, but often denied the excessive presence of images of the Virgin and the saints.