MEXICO CITY, April 16 -- Channel 40, a small, independent television station, aired a news program in May 1997 in which several former priests said a prominent Mexican priest had sexually abused them years earlier.
The next day, station officials said, a Mexican corporation canceled an advertising contract worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the next months, they said, all 25 major advertisers withdrew and the station hovered near bankruptcy until it was bailed out by another TV station.
Until now, that was the last time the Mexican media extensively examined sexual abuse by priests, which is still largely a taboo topic in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country. But as a scandal over pedophile priests spreads in the United States and Pope John Paul II summons U.S. prelates to Rome for consultations on the issue, Mexico, which has more Catholics than any country except Brazil, is being reluctantly dragged into the debate.
A leading bishop acknowledged last week, for the first time ever here, that there have been cases of pedophilia involving Mexican priests, but refused to disclose details.
"We are not angels," said Bishop Jose Martin Rabago, vice president of the bishops' conference. "This is not an agreeable topic. It's one that we would prefer not to have to deal with. But we also must be brave and clear" and respect people's "legitimate right to know."
Then on Sunday, Cardinal Norberto Rivera broke his long silence on the issue, saying that there have been cases of abusive priests, but he denounced the recent media focus as an "unjustifiable attack" that tarred the church and all its priests with the sins of a few.
Perhaps most startling to followers of the church here, Rivera also said that "no one should be above the law" and that those who commit sexual abuse should be turned over to the authorities. That was widely seen as a sharp departure; days earlier another top bishop, Sergio Obeso, had argued that abusive priests should not be handed over to police, saying, "Dirty laundry is best washed at home."
Then a major newspaper, El Universal, began a series on Monday disclosing the Mexican church maintains two centers for treating priests with a variety of behavioral problems, from drug addiction to sexual abuse; the paper said 550 unnamed priests had been treated.
The recent remarks of leading church officials, while vague and at times defensive, have been widely seen as an acknowledgment that Mexico can no longer ignore a scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church elsewhere.
"It's like a bottle that you shake -- the pressure builds up, then the top pops off," said the Rev. Antonio Roqueñi, a priest and lawyer in Mexico City. "They knew they couldn't hide the problem anymore and they had to do something; there was too much pressure. Sometimes there is just too much laundry, and it's too dirty, to keep it in the house."
Analysts traced Mexico's slowness to confront the issue publicly to the economic, political and social clout of the church in Mexico, whose 90 million followers include many business and government leaders. They also tied it to the general reluctance in Mexico for any victims of sexual abuse to report it.
"In general, sexual issues are very difficult to speak about in the church in Mexico: homosexuality, priests with children -- and of course not pedophilia," said the Rev. Alberto Athie, a Mexican priest now working in the United States. "We cannot freely speak about these issues, this is a cultural reality. But they exist."
Athie was until recently an executive secretary of the Mexican bishops' conference. But he said he was so "marginalized" by his Mexican peers in recent years when he urged an airing of sexual abuse questions that he took a sabbatical and now is ministering to Hispanic Catholics in Chicago.
Roqueñi said church leaders have long avoided dealing with, or even discussing, sex crimes committed by priests, as well as other sexual matters. He said that while he worked for the archdiocese of Mexico City for more than two decades, he counseled priests "leading double lives" with girlfriends. He said there were many such priests, and they have support groups.
Roberto Blancarte, a leading scholar of the Mexican church at the Colegio de Mexico, said police, prosecutors and society still tend to regard sex crime victims as somehow culpable. He said victims know there is little chance their attacker will be punished and fear they will be shamed in their community. So, he said, sex crimes are rarely reported, especially not when they involve someone as revered as a priest.
Emanuel Oceguera, 21, a Mexico City university student, said in an interview that his 11-year-old cousin was sexually abused by a priest several years ago in a Catholic school in the city of Morelia, 180 miles west of Mexico City. He said his family did not report the abuse because they were afraid people would think the boy was gay.
"To attack priests is to damage the image of the church, and that's why we avoid this subject," Oceguera said. "Our faith blinds us to reason."
"It would be like going against ourselves, our beliefs," said Laura Castañeda, 35, an officer worker in Mexico City. "We can't think of a priest as a liar or a rapist. And when someone has been the victim of that they don't discuss it because it is shameful. It is not easy for us to attack the church."
The Catholic Church has been a dominant force in Mexico since Spanish conquistadors introduced it 500 years ago. Because of the church's tremendous influence under Spanish rule, reformers in the decades after Mexico's independence in 1810 imposed strict constitutional restrictions on the church, which have since been lifted.
But, in fact, the church has always held great sway. Citing the Channel 40 case, analysts said media companies fear enraging the church and its powerful friends.
"There's no doubt about it, it's fear and it goes directly to economics," said Raymundo Riva Palacio, a leading Mexican journalist. He said conservative Catholic business leaders "supply most of the advertising to the Mexican media."
The Channel 40 case was especially clear, Riva Palacio said, because the subject of the allegations was the Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder and leader of the conservative order known as the Legion of Christ, which has about 500 priests working in more than 20 countries.
The program featured interviews with several of nine former priests -- among them a lawyer, engineer and university professor -- who alleged that Maciel had sexually abused each of them as early as age 10, when they were students in schools run by the order. The men, who are now elderly, filed formal complaints with the Vatican, which last year halted an investigation without comment. Some of them repeated their allegations in interviews, expressing frustration that these issues get more public airing in the United States than in Mexico.
Before the Channel 40 program, their allegations had been reported in the Hartford Courant newspaper in Connecticut and the National Catholic Reporter, a U.S. publication. Maciel, 82, who lives in Rome, and his supporters have repeatedly and vehemently denied the allegations, calling them lies. They have said the allegations are a conspiracy by disgruntled former priests to discredit Maciel.
A spokesman for the Legion of Christ in Connecticut this week again denied any impropriety by Maciel. He referred inquiries to a Web site the group has created specifically to rebut the allegations, which contains letters from Maciel, Rivera and a half-dozen other priests defending and praising Maciel.
Pedro Pablo Treviño del Bosque, a former Mexican consul general in Austin, is among the many Mexicans who discount the allegations. "I have known him for 14 years, and 99 percent of the people who know him speak well of him," Treviño said. "He is a saint."
One of those who have made allegations against Maciel, Jose Barba, a Harvard-educated professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said in an interview that he and his fellow former priests believe Maciel's influence, including ties to the pope, have prevented an impartial investigation.
He and Juan Vaca, another former Legion of Christ priest who teaches psychology at a university in New York, expressed hope Mexican society would force the kind of discussion of sexual abuse issues now going on in the United States and elsewhere. But many, including Mexico City lawyer Jose Antonio Perez, another former priest who has made sexual abuse allegations against Maciel, said that will be slow in coming.
"In Mexico," he said, "it's not a good idea to denounce a person who represents God."