A rebel with a cause (or three) … and a style all her own

I have no way if knowing if Julia Klug’s past is as she says it is (she claims she was raped by a priest as a child in Guatemala, forced to marry him, and beaten by her mother-in-law before fleeing to Mexico), but she has been tireless in fighting for justice for victims of clerical sexual abuse, for preservation of the secular state and the rights of sexual minorities and women.

Klug son, Air Force pilot Lt. Ricardo Martinez Klug, was killed in a mysterious crash in 2010, at the time when his mother was leading a fight to head off plans to hire military chaplains.  She says she was warned that “something” would happen to hurt her if she continued her fights against the church (she’d already been hit by Cardinal Rivera’s car, then threatened with a lawsuit for “attacking” the car with … a petition in 2007), but she keeps on fighting… she says, not against the Church, but against clerical interference in politics and against discrimination against women and sexual minorities.

She was arrested again today, as she regularly is, out in front of the Cathederal in Mexico City.