Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tunis to close down all the Catholic churches in the country, forced the Holy See to accept an agreement of the type known as a modus vivendi, a term that literally means "a way of living". This particular agreement was unofficially described as instead a "modus non moriendi" ("a way of not dying"). By it, all but 5 of the country's more than 70 churches were handed over to the state, including what had been the cathedral of the archdiocese, while the state, for its part, promised that the buildings would be put only to use of public interest consonant with
History of the Catholic Church in Mexico of Our Lady of Guadalupe. When Pope John Paul II visited Mexico in 1979 as part of the Conference of Latin American Bishops' gathering in Puebla, President Miguel López Portillo (1976–82), gave the pope a warm welcome even though this was not a state visit. The top echelons of the hierarchy sought to continue the modus vivendi in Mexico, but as the Catholic Church underwent changes as a result of the Second Vatican Council, so too did a number of Mexican bishops and laypeople. The bishop of Cuernavaca, Sergio Méndez Arceo, initially appointed in 1953, became an active adherent of