Two Jesuit priests were assassinated this Monday in his temple in the community of Cerocahui, in the Sierra Tarahumara region, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua (north), denounced this Tuesday the Society of Jesus.
“We denounce the murder of our brothers Javier Campos Morales (…) and Joaquín César Mora Salazar,” the religious order said in a statement.
“We condemn these violent acts, we demand justice and the recovery of the bodies of our brothers who were taken from the temple by armed people,” he added.
We condemn these violent acts, we demand justice and the recovery of the bodies of our brothers who were taken from the temple by armed people
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, confirmed the crime which, he said, occurred when armed men entered the village church chasing another person who, apparently, was trying to take refuge in the temple.
“They assassinated him, the priests came out and apparently they were also assassinated. We are now attending to this matter,” added the president in his daily press conference.
López Obrador acknowledged that several municipalities in the mountains of Chihuahua suffer from “a considerable presence of organized crime”.
“It seems that there is already information about the possible perpetrators of these crimes,” the president reported. According to experts, the Sierra de Chihuahua is an important drug transit route to the United States, which is why it is violently disputed by drug cartels.
The Mexican Province of the Society of Jesus demanded the adoption of “protective measures to safeguard the lives” of the Jesuits, nuns, laity and the entire Cerocahui community. He denounced that these crimes are not “isolated” events because “every day men and women are arbitrarily deprived of life.”
“The Sierra Tarahumara, like many other regions of the country, faces conditions of violence and oblivion that have not been reversed,” added the Society of Jesus.
The Mexican Episcopate Conference also condemned the “tragedy” and demanded “a prompt investigation”, in addition to security for the country’s priests.
In Mexico, members of various religious orders must act as defenders and mediators between the inhabitants of their communities and the hitmen of organized crime who operate there.
In states like Michoacán (west) or Guerrero (south) some of them have opted for dialogue with drug traffickers as a way to pacify these regions, usually impoverished and with little state presence.
Some 30 priests have been murdered in the last decade in Mexico, according to the NGO Centro Católico Multimedial. Mexico is shaken by a wave of violence linked to drug trafficking in the midst of which more than 340,000 people have been killed since December 2006, according to official figures.
AFP
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