MEXICO: Christian Cult Stones Students Attempting To Attend Secular School

Saying that the “Virgin Of The Rosary” had told them that secular education is the work of the devil, a Christian cult in Mexico burned down one town’s only government-run school and hurled stones at students attempting to then attend classes in the homes of teachers.

“It is a problem of fundamentalism,” Michoacan state government secretary Jesus Reyna Garcia told Mexico’s state-run Notimex news agency on Wedesday. The talks came after residents of New Jerusalem blocked roads into the community and attacked children, parents and teachers trying to enter a house that had been converted into a school. Three people were injured in the clashes Monday, state officials said. “We need to remind these people that they are not living in a separate territory, in an island,” Gov. Fausto Vallejo told reporters. Leaders of the cult said they were not opposed to educating the community’s youth. “What happens is that those people are using the school as a way to introduce to our community things that are banned, like fashion, immorality, vice, drugs and alcoholism,” said a New Jerusalem Cathedral spokesman known as Father Luis.

Even the Catholic Church is calling for state intervention.