By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 2, 1991; Page A20

MEXICO CITY, NOV. 1 -- President Carlos Salinas de Gortari announced today he will bestow a new legal status on the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico as a first step toward erasing the country's bitter legacy of official anti-clericalism.

The measure, revealed in an annual report to the nation, formalized Salinas's intention to depart from rigid constitutional restrictions on church activities imposed at the end of Mexico's turn-of-the-century revolutionary chaos, during which land-owning clergy frequently took sides against popular rebellions to which the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) traces its origin.

As the years passed, authorities largely have ignored the legal restraints, and, in a nation that is 90 percent Catholic, church activities are an important part of daily life. Nevertheless, the church's legal status has endured as a passionate issue for many PRI leaders imbued with legends of the ruling party's revolutionary past.

Echoing frequent comments from Mexican prelates, Salinas declared it is time to bring the constitution into line with the reality of everyday religious practice, renouncing what he called "pretense or mistaken complicity."

"We shall promote consistency between what the law decrees and the daily conduct of citizens, taking another step toward domestic harmony within the framework of modernization," he added.

Without being specific, Salinas suggested he intends to grant legal recognition to the church -- a long-standing demand from the clergy -- but without immediately granting other demands, including the right of priests to vote or to own property.

"Owing to past experience, the Mexican people do not want the clergy to take part in politics or to accumulate material wealth," he declared.

In a measure of how contested the church's role still is here, the Chamber of Deputies accorded Salinas a standing ovation when he mentioned these limits to his reform program.

It was one of several moments marked by applause as Salinas delivered his report to the legislators and, by live television, to the nation. Although an annual exercise in the Mexican tradition, this year's report was accorded special importance since it marked the midway point of Salinas's six-year term and laid out his goals for the next three years.

In addition to the church reforms, the Mexican leader declared his intention to improve the country's antiquated communal farm system and increase spending on education. As he has before, Salinas said the keystone of his foreign and economic policies is the Free Trade Accord being negotiated with the United States and Canada.

Cardinal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, primate of Mexico, lauded Salinas's initiative to heal the historical antagonisms despite the requests from the church hierarchy that went unanswered by Salinas. "This is the beginning of an important change," he said. "It is very opportune."

Since taking office in 1988, Salinas has promoted a reconciliation between government and church, saying their confrontational relations should be modernized along with the rest of Mexico's social, political and economical life. Because of the political charge the issue still evokes, however, he had been slow to enact practical changes in the law. The Mexican Conference of Bishops made a formal request in 1989 for revision of constitutional restrictions that deny legal recognition to the church, bar clerics or the church from owning property, prevent the country's 3,000 priests from voting and outlaw church-run schools or other outward displays of religious activities.

In addition, the conference has encouraged renewal of diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Ties were cut in 1861 by one of Mexico's revolutionary icons, President Benito Juarez, who also expelled the papal nuncio.

Although Salinas has not resumed full diplomatic relations, he received Pope John Paul II here in 1990 and paid a courtesy call on the pontiff last July in Rome. In addition, Salinas and his top officials have met frequently with Mexican bishops and the papal nuncio, Bishop Jeronimo Prigione, and Salinas named the first Mexican diplomatic representative to the Vatican in decades.