A Priest And A Crime Caper

The priest acknowledges that in November 1993, he arranged a meeting between Ramon and the nuncio. The nuncio went to the residence of President Carlos Salinas in an attempt to persuade him to meet with Ramon, who was waiting back in the nuncio's office with Montano. Heeding the advice of Carpizo, his attorney general, Salinas refused the meeting. In January 1994, Montano arranged a meeting between the nuncio and Benjamin. Montano denies playing any role in a cover-up because he doesn't believe the Arellano Felix brothers were involved in the killing. "My theory is that there was another group contracted exclusively to assassinate the cardinal." He says that Ramon--a man U.S. drug agents claim is responsible for 100 or more murders--was at the airport, but only by chance. Montano adds that another brother, Javier--along with Benjamin--attended a baptism he performed in Tijuana the morning of the killing, and he has the logbook of baptisms to prove it. Prosecutors place both Javier and Ramon Arellano Felix at the Guadalajara airport.

Carpizo asserts that Montano's actions were in part motivated by money. He alleges that Montano falsified the baptism records in exchange for donations to the Tijuana Seminary by the drug cartel. Montano denies that. At the time of the killing, the Arellano Felix organization was becoming the main shipper of Colombian cocaine across the Mexican border into California. The cartel "didn't have the level of national fame they do now," Carpizo says, but "it was known that they were drug traffickers and powerful and advancing in Tijuana."

Failure to turn in a fugitive is against the law in Mexico, but there are exceptions. People considered "close friends" of the suspect are sometimes safe from prosecution. The papal nuncio enjoys the status of ambassador and hence diplomatic immunity. Montano argues that his position as a priest protected him: "In these situations of conscience, we don't have the obligation to go to the authorities."

Prosecutors recently announced that they've reopened the case. The attorney general's office refuses to say whether Montano is being investigated, but he's not been charged with any crimes. Montano, who now heads a modest parish in Ensenada, says the last time he had any contact with the Arellano Felix family was around 1997, when he was stationed in Sacramento, California, and Ruth was living in Chula Vista, near San Diego. Benjamin was finally arrested in March, a month after his brother Ramon was killed by police allegedly working for a rival drug lord.

The election of President Vicente Fox in 2000 raised the hopes of many clergymen that some of the church's old power would be restored. Fox is the first president in more than a century to openly proclaim his faith, attending mass in public and accepting a giant wooden cross from his daughter at his Inauguration. But though he may share the values of the church, Fox has stayed out of its business. If anything, Fox has been moving to make the legal system more independent, which could mean that the church may find itself fighting more battles in court rather than making backdoor arrangements with the powers that be.

© 2002