Mexico: President accuses church leaders of hypocrisy

Violence and organized crime are rampant in many areas of Mexico. As reported by El Universal on 1 July 2022, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) responded to an open letter written by Catholic bishops letter, accusing them of hypocrisy, claiming that the Catholic Church wants to promote peace by solving the country’s problems through yet more violence.  The Catholic bishops’ open letter was published on 24 June 2022 and called on the authorities to rethink their security strategy for the good of the country (CEM, 24 June 2022). At the end of June there have been a host of incidents illustrating the sort of pressure and violence referred to by the bishops:

• 20 June 2022: Agenzia fides reported on 22 June that two elderly Jesuit priests were shot dead while trying to defend a man who sought refuge in their church in Cerocahui, Tarahumara. The bodies of the three men killed were taken away by the group in a pick-up truck and were found two days later on 22 June (BBC News, 23 June 2022).
• 28 June 2022: Zenit reported that a criminal group was demanding 50% of all money raised at the church festivals celebrating patron saints in the Guadalajara region. Cardinal Robles Ortega, Archbishop of Guadalajara, confirmed that this was the way organized crime is ‘authorizing’ church festivities. He also added that, as happened to the Bishop of Zacatecas, he too had been detained and interrogated by drug traffickers at check-points while travelling.
• 29 June 2022: An article published by Centro Catolico Multimedial on 30 June 2022 describes the embarrassment of churches being forced to make agreements with illegal groups. The spokesman for the archdiocese of Guadalajara, Antonio Gutierrez, reported that various churches in the Guadalajara area were being pressured by drug traffickers into paying a “floor charge” in exchange for protection from attack.
• 29 June 2022: As reported by Milenio, the Jesuit leader in Mexico has revealed that just months before the murder of two Jesuit priests in Cerocahui, Jesuit nuns working there had been threatened by local drug traffickers. The nuns run educational projects to help prevent children from being recruited by criminal groups. The levels of intimidation, which include death-threats and sexual violence, have led to the closure of some of the Jesuit schools in that community.

World Watch Research analyst Rossana Ramirez comments: “Organized crime has been able to increase its control over a large part of the nation by capitalizing on weaknesses in society and failures in state policy. By continuing to promote a culture of peace and opposition to criminal activities, the Church is doubly vulnerable – on the one hand, it faces the increasing power of illegal organizations; and on the other hand, it faces the apathy and lack of understanding on the part of the government officials. The lack of political will to design an effective strategy to reduce the high levels of violence in the country is putting the whole of society at risk.”