Mexican cardinal welcomes ruling that he didn't break law during abortion debate

Mexico's government has ruled that that the capital's Roman Catholic cardinal did not violate a law banning religious leaders from involvement in politics during a heated abortion debate in April.

The Interior Department _ which oversees church-state relations in Mexico _ said a commission had found no evidence that Cardinal Norberto Rivera or the church's chief spokesman had violated the law.

"Storms pass, and here is the result," Rivera told reporters after Sunday Mass.

Members of the small Social Democrat Alternative party had accused Rivera and the spokesman, Rev. Hugo Valdemar, of breaking the law when they denounced a Mexico City measure to legalize abortion and said legislators who voted for it would be excommunicating themselves.

The measure, which legalized the procedure during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, passed in April and has gone into effect.

Mexico enacted harsh anti-clerical laws following the 1910-1917 revolution, and Catholics staged a bloody uprising against those rules in the late 1920s.

The restrictions were eased in the 1990s, but current law still forbids clerics from "forming associations for political ends" and bans political meetings at churches.

Prelates who violate the law can face fines or the closing of their churches.