Jesuit priests killed in Mexican church

MEXICO CITY — Two elderly Jesuit priests were killed inside a church where a man pursued by gunmen apparently sought refuge in a remote mountainous area of northern Mexico, the religious order’s Mexican branch announced Tuesday.

Javier Campos Morales, 79, and Joaquin Cesar Mora Salazar, 80, were slain Monday inside the church in Cerocahui in Chihuahua state.

They were apparently killed after a man fleeing a drug gang took refuge in the church, authorities said. The gang apparently pursued and caught him, and killed all three.

Chihuahua Gov. Maria Eugenia Campos confirmed a third man was killed, without identifying him. But President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said during his daily news conference that the man fleeing the gunmen was also killed.

The state government later identified the third man as a tourist guide, and said he had been kidnapped and taken to the church, apparently by the gunmen.

Lopez Obrador said authorities had information about possible suspects in the killings and noted the area has a strong organized crime presence.

Violence has plagued the Tarahumara mountains for years. The rugged, pine-clad region is home to the Indigenous group of the same name. Cerocahui is near a point where Chihuahua state meets Sonora and Sinaloa, a major drug producing region.

The Jesuits started missions among the Tarahumara people, who prefer the name Raramuri, in the 1600s but were expelled by Spain in 1767. They returned around 1900.

A statement from the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus in Mexico demanded justice and the return of the men’s bodies. It said gunmen had taken both of their bodies from the church.

“Acts like these are not isolated,” the statement read. “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.”

For some reason, the gunmen did not kill a third priest who was at the church, but refused his pleas for them to leave the bodies of his two colleagues, said Narce Santibanez, the press director for the Jesuits in Mexico.

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

The Tarahumara Diocese said in a statement “the killers, not content with murdering them, have taken their bodies … leaving a wake of pain, sadness and indignation among all of us who want to mourn them.”

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

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.

Chihuahua’s governor wrote in her Twitter account that she “laments and condemns” the killings and said security arrangements had been discussed for priests in the area.

Campos Morales was ordained as a priest in 1972 and spent almost a half century working in parishes in the Tarahumara region, known for its grinding poverty and scenic beauty.

Mora Salazar was ordained in 1971 and worked off and on in the Tarahumara in the 1970s and 80s before returning full time in 2000.

MORE TRAGEDY

Meanwhile, two Canadians — one of them sought by Interpol — have been found dead of knife wounds in Mexico’s Caribbean coast resort of Playa del Carmen, the state prosecutor’s office said Tuesday.

Prosecutors in Quintana Roo state, also home to resorts like Cancun and Tulum, said the man and the woman were found dead Monday at a hotel or condominium in the troubled resort, and a third person was reported injured.

There was no immediate information on their names or hometowns. “Global Affairs Canada is aware of the death of two Canadian citizens in Mexico,” the ministry said in a statement.

But prosecutors confirmed the male victim was on an Interpol wanted list for fraud charges.

Playa del Carmen has been hit by several instances of violence involving foreigners, most recently in January, when two Canadians were killed at a local resort, apparently because of debts between international drug and weapons trafficking gangs.

There have been a series of brazen acts of violence elsewhere along Mexico’s resort-studded Mayan Riviera coast, the crown jewel of the country’s tourism industry.