JESUITS: 2 PRIESTS KILLED IN MEXICO

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.

The governor said the killings caused “deep anger, indignation and pain” and “shook us to our deepest depths.”

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, pineclad 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.

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 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.”

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.