Guadalajara Reporter

Mexico’s President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto will staff his cabinet with drug traffickers, a bishop in Saltillo, Coahuila controversially claimed this week.

“We don’t want to put up with a team of political narcos in power for the next six years,” Raul Vera Lopez declared in Sunday’s Mass at the Santiago Cathedral.

Vera also suggested the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was guilty of money laundering and demanded an investigation into the funding of Peña Nieto’s campaign. The bishop went on to describe the PRI as “wolves” who were “preparing a road of death, injustice and violence” for Mexico.

“Lying is a sin,” shot back Ruben Moreira, the PRI governor of Coahuila. He denounced Vera’s declarations as “totally false,” and challenged the bishop to provide evidence to support them.

The PRI faced many accusations of making secret deals with drug cartels throughout its 71-year rule, yet Vera’s comments inevitably drew controversy for undermining the strict separation of church and state in Mexico.

The Catholic Church, which has enjoyed the support of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) during the Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon administrations, does not have a strong relationship with the traditionally secular PRI.