Guerrero has become the most dangerous state in the country to exercise the priestly ministry. According to data from the Catholic Multimedia Center (CCM), 12 religious have been murdered since 2009: nine priests, two seminarians, and a sacristan.
The latest case was that of Bertoldo Pantaleón Estrada, who was murdered last Monday in the municipality of Eduardo Neri.
“Organized crime has taken over practically the entire area. It’s where the most priests have been murdered, where the most have been threatened and extorted… Guerrero is a reflection of what many regions of the country experience; territories dominated by crime where priests work in extreme conditions,” explained Father Omar Sotelo, director of the CCM, in an interview with El Sol de México.
At the discussion panel, “Cassocks: Blood and Silence. Violence against Catholic Church Personnel in Mexico,” organized by the CCM on April 9 of this year, it was noted that 26 attacks on churches and extortion of priests were reported each week.
Omar Sotelo explained that violence against the church has not decreased. “On the contrary, it has manifested itself in a more brutal and strategic manner. The murder of a priest not only affects the individual, but an entire institution, because parishes fulfill social functions that the State has ceased to assume: they provide health care, education, and support for migrants, women, and children. When a priest is murdered, a social stabilizer is eliminated.”
Violence against the church has not decreased. On the contrary, it has manifested itself in a more brutal and strategic manner.
Father Bertoldo’s case adds to a long list of victims in Guerrero: Father Habacuc Hernández Benítez and seminarians Eduardo Oregón and Silvestre González, murdered in Arcelia in 2009; Ugandan missionary John Ssenyondo, found in a mass grave during the search for the 43 Ayotzinapa students; and Father Gregorio López Gorostieta, executed in 2014 after publicly denouncing the violence in the Tierra Caliente region, according to information published on the Catholic center’s social media.
“There are regions of the country that are entirely invaded, dominated, and ruled by organized crime, where our priests who work 24/7, many of them working in these areas of conflict, including cartels, internal wars, continue to work, obviously risking their lives, and yet they are bravely doing it. I can tell you this and I can assure you. I know priests in Guerrero who bravely exercise their ministry in such an effective, professional, and courageous manner that it can even cost them their lives, and yet they continue to do so,” the CMM director emphasized.
Source: oem
