Mexico City - Mexico's Holy Death sect, which claims to have more than 11 million members, will conduct same-sex weddings now that the law allows them in this capital, the primate of the Mexico-U.S. Traditional Catholic Church said.
"We feel that these marriages (between homosexuals) are possible under that shadow of mercy," David Romo told Efe in an interview at the denomination's mother church in Mexico City.
Although this denomination has a nationwide presence, it is only in the Federal District that the Holy Death Church will undertake same-sex marriages, since that is where such unions have been legal since late 2009.
Shunned by the Vatican and the Mexican government, the sect bases its faith on the Catholic religion but with the sacred figure of Holy Death as its central element.
Romo said that there are homosexuals among the members of the church, and therefore he hopes "soon" to be able to conduct a same-sex wedding.
Mexico City's leftist-dominated Asamblea Legislativa approved last month a change to municipal ordinances authorizing same-sex couples to wed and to adopt children, a decision that Romo called "wise, prudent and sensible."
But the first marriages of that type in Mexico City will have to wait until March, according to capital government sources.
"Unfortunately in Mexico, as in many parts of the world, there is much discrimination, much homophobia," Romo said. "It's a (social) sector that in one way or another are children of God, they are capable, useful people."
Romo lamented the fact that Mexico's Catholic hierarchy had come out against gay marriage.
He said the Holy Death sect has some 10 million faithful in Mexico with 1.5 million more abroad, mainly in the United States.
Romo also rejected that idea, as claimed by some, that the sect is a belief system linked only to lower-class social sectors and criminals, including organized crime. And he noted that top drug kingpins nabbed recently by the police were apparently adherents of the Catholic Church, not of his sect. EFE
