Mexico shaken after three priests killed within a week
MEXICO - The Catholic priest José Alfredo López Guillén was seized from his parish residence in rural Michoacán, where he served a congregation of corn farmers and ranchers. The next day, the wreckage of his Volkswagen Jetta was discovered on the outskirts of the town of Quiroga, 71 miles (115km) from where it had been stolen.
The priest’s body was discovered on Sunday on a lonely stretch of road, nearly a week after his abduction. He had been shot five times in the stomach. López was the third priest to have been kidnapped and killed in Mexico in less than a week. His body was found days after Alejo Jiménez and José Juárez were abducted from their church in the city of Poza Rica and found dead in the Gulf state of Veracruz. Crimes offered yet another reminder of the lawlessness afflicting Mexico – and proof that in the deeply pious country, not even the clergy are safe from violence. Over the past four years, 15 priests have been killed in Mexico; most of the cases go unsolved – not unlike most crimes in the country. A survey released this week by the state statistics agency showed that 93.7% of crimes went unreported or uninvestigated in 2015 – an increase of 0.9% from the previous year. The motives for attacks on Mexico clergy also remain unclear. In the late 1920s, hundreds of priests were killed during a period of anticlerical turmoil described by Graham Greene in his novel The Power and the Glory. But analysts say more recent attacks are not motivated by any anti-clerical sentiment, and are instead simply a reflection of the bloodletting unleashed by power struggles between organized crime groups and the government. Although many drug traffickers consider themselves devout Catholics, priests have reportedly been killed for denouncing criminality, or even for refusing to baptize the children of narcos.
(theguardian.com)