You do know that Mexico and Italy are heavily identified secular-socialist states correct?
The Mexican persecution of Catholics was pretty severe, and the country has never recovered from it.
Just today our assistant pastor, Fr. Manuel Perez, told us a bit about his grandfather, who survived the Cristero War in Mexico. When he was a child, his grandfather took him to see the sites near his own home where priests and nuns were shot dead, where churches were dynamited, and where catechists had to hide their Bibles, prayer books and hymnals.
As long ago as the Revolution of Ayutla (1854), nearly all of the top figures in the government were fierce anticlericals. In 1917, a new Constitution was enacted, hostile to Church and religion, which promulgatedthe same kind of draconian anti-clericalism that characterized the French and Russian Revolutions. The 1917 Constitution
- outlawed teaching by the Church,
- gave control over Church matters to the state,
- put all Church property at the disposal of the state,
- outlawed religious orders,
- outlawed foreign born priests,
- gave states the power to limit or eliminate priests in their territory,
- deprived priests of the right to vote or hold office,
- prohibited Catholic organizations which advocated public policy,
- prohibited religious publications from commenting on public policy,
- prohibited clergy from religious celebrations and from wearing clerical garb outside of a church and
- deprived citizens of the right to a trial for violations of these provisions.
Many of the anti-Church provisions were not evenly enforced past the 1930's, but they were not eliminated from the Mexican constitution until 1992.
Mexican society and politics have been profoundly shaped by over a century and a half of government hostility toward the Catholic Church.
So: not a good example of a "Catholic society".