MEXICANS ELECT CHURCH-FRIENDLY PARTY, END 71-YEAR REIGN OF PRI

MEXICO CITY (CWNews.com) - Mexicans voted in astounding numbers on Sunday to elect a new government, rejecting the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for the first time in 71 years, choosing instead a party seen as more friendly to the Catholic Church.

Vicente Fox of the center-right National Action Party (PAN) was elected president of Mexico, while the coalition of PAN and the Green Party (PVEM) took control of Congress. Fox will be sworn in on December 1 while the new Congress will be seated on September 1.

Restrictions on the Catholic Church in Mexico in the 1920s with the confiscation of Church property, a ban on Church involvement in public life, and finally persecution of clerics and laypeople. Many of the restrictions continued under the government of PRI with the restriction on the wearing of habits only being lifted in 1992. The country's constitution continues to restrict the bishops' ability to speak on political issues.

With the election of Fox and other PAN candidates and the removal of PRI from power, many observers expect the restrictions on the Church to loosen further, especially since PAN had been connected to Catholic lay groups from its beginnings. Earlier this year, the Mexican bishops' conference issued a pastoral letter on the presidential elections, calling on Catholics to support life, which same interpreted as indicating a preference for Fox, who is pro-life.

Fox, 58, is a former Coca-Cola executive who is expected to continue the free-market, free-trade policies of his predecessor President Ernesto Zedillo. As of Monday morning with 92 percent of the vote counted, Fox had won 43 percent followed by PRI's Francisco Labastida with 36 percent. The PAN-PVEM alliance took 38.5 percent of the vote in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, compared with 36 percent for PRI and 19 percent for the leftist coalition led by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

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