Two Jesuit priests murdered in Mexico

Mexico City, June 21, 2022: The Jesuits in Mexico have said two of their priests were murdered while trying to defend a man who was seeking refuge in a church while being being pursued by an armed person.

A statement from Jesuit provincial of Mexico Father Luis Gerardo Moro Madrid June 21 informed “with deep sorrow and a sense of anguish” about the murder of Fathers Fathers Javier Campos and Joaquín Mora in the afternoon of June 20 in Cerocahui, Tarahumara, a remote mountainous area of northern Mexico.

The murders took place in the context of the violence that Mexico has been experiencing for years, the message further explained.

The provincial said they are working with the federal and state authorities to ensure the safety of their other members – Esteban Cornejo, Jesús Reyes, and Jesús Zaglul along with the parish’s pastoral team.

“We publicly condemn this tragedy and demand a prompt investigation and safety for the community,” he further said. We will keep you informed about the next actions that we, as the Mexican Jesuit Province, will be taking.

Jesuit superior general Father Arturo Sosa said he was “shocked and saddened by this news” and that his thoughts and prayers are with the Jesuits in Mexico and the families of the men.

“We have to stop violence in our world and so much unnecessary suffering,” asserted the leader of the largest religious congregation for men in the Catholic Church.

The Tarahumara Mountains have been plagued by violence and Cerocahui is near a point where Chihuahua state meets Sonora and Sinaloa, a major drug producing region.

The Mexico Jesuits have demanded justice and the return of the priests’ bodies, which they said had been taken by the gunmen from the church.

“Acts like these are not isolated,” the statement said. “The Tarahumara mountains, like many other regions of the country, face conditions of violence and abandonment that have not been reversed. Every day men and women are arbitrarily deprived of life, as our murdered brothers were today.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said during his daily news conference June 21 that the priests were apparently killed by gunmen pursuing another man who sought refuge in the church. That man was also killed, the president said.

López Obrador said authorities have information about possible suspects in the killings and that the area has a strong organized crime presence.

The gunmen spared the life of a third priest who was at the church, but refused his pleas for them to leave the bodies of his two colleagues, said Narce Santibañez, the press director for the Jesuits in Mexico.

The surviving priest said his two colleagues had been killed with gunshots at close range.

The killing of priests has been a persistent tragedy in Mexico, at least since the start of the drug war in 2006.

“The danger is always there,” says Father Gilberto Guevara who serves in the parish of Aguililla in the western state of Michoacan, a town which has been on the front lines of cartel turf wars for years. Three priests have been killed in the area over the past decade.

Father Guevara said the cartel respect them as long they do not get in the way, “just as the government respects us as long as we are useful to them.”

The Church’s Catholic Multimedia Center said seven priests have been murdered under the current administration, which took office in December 2018, and at least two dozen under the former president, who took office in 2012.

The center said that in 2021, a Franciscan priest died when he was caught in the crossfire of a drug gang shootout in the north-central state of Zacatecas as he drove to Mass. Another priest was killed in the central state of Morelos and another in the violence-plagued state of Guanajuato that year.

In 2019, a priest was stabbed to death in the northern border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

Source: jesuits.global and agencies