March 2005 Page 11
The mayor of Cd. Guadalupe, Lic. Juan Francisco Rivera Bedoya, had a meeting with the priests of the Zone which includes our Holy Cross parish and houses. A "zone" is a collection of deaneries.
It was a breakfast meeting. The episcopal vicar in charge of the zone welcomed everyone and opened with a prayer. He remarked that there had been a similar meeting with the candidates for mayor during the election. This meeting took place at the suggestion of the Archbishop when he met with the mayor. The archbishop feels that the priests are close to the problems that the people face.
There was a powerpoint presentation by one of the mayor's aides. It was about the work of the Departamento de Integración Familiar (DIF, Department of the Integration of the Family). presented a list of the problems facing people in Cd. Guadalupe, a list of things that most of us would recognize in the U.S.:
He pointed out that the state of Nuevo León has a population of 4 million people. The metropolitan Monterrey area has 3.28% of the state's population and continues to grow rapidly. This creates a whole series of problems with education, labor, social issues, etc.
The mayor and his aides listed the things that they had done to respond to the problems. Then the meeting was opened for questions. The priests had quite a few:
Luis Eduardo (in charge of Pastoral Social for the Archdiocese and also works with migrants) raised the issues of family violence, the very low number of elderly who receive benefits, the problem of a possible project which would affect the environment, and the construction of a house for migrant workers. The mayor and his aides handled these and many other questions.
One of the priests pointed out a number of problem including the theft of cars near his church. The mayor's aides said that they understood the problem--their cars had been stolen too.
The mayor left about an hour and a half into the meeting; his aides remained. The meeting ended after two hours.
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