The Catholic Church in Mexico has hit out at the government there over an alleged smear campaign against three priests found dead last week.
A spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico City yesterday said that prosecutors and local media have sought to cover up the authorities' inability to tackle drug cartels.
Two of the priests – Alejo Nabor Jimenez and Alfredo Suarez de la Cruz – were found shot dead, their bodies riddled with bullets, in Varacruz last week. On Sunday it was confirmed that a third clergyman – Jose Alfredo Lopez Guillen – had been shot to death in Michoacan state after being abducted.
State prosecutors in Veracruz alleged that the first two priests had been drinking with their killers before they disappeared. Separately, local media published a photo suggesting the third priest had been last seen with a young boy in a hotel, but other reports said the image was not of the priest.
"In these cases it has become clear that state governments that cannot handle the drug cartels, are criminalizing the victims, depicting some as drunks and another as a paedophile, making it look like the crimes were not related to drug cartels but because of some immoral conduct," said Father Hugo Valdemar Romero, spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico City.
"To physical death they are adding moral assassination, slandering the priests and holding them up to ridicule... and that has caused deep indignation in the Church," Romero said.
Cardinal Alberto Suarez Inda, the head of the Michoacan archdiocese, defended his priest's character. "The publication of some images and malicious interpretations has made the situation more painful," he said.
The Mexican Council of Bishops also urged authorities to investigate the killings without slandering the victims. "We respectfully and urgently demand that the respective authorities get to the bottom of both cases... and with the same forcefulness, we demand that no priest, or anyone, be slandered, above all before the investigations are finished," the council wrote.
At least 31 priests have reportedly been killed in Mexico since 2006. The country is 81 per cent Catholic.
The US State Department wrote in its 2015 International Religious Freedom report that priests in Mexico are "victims of extortion attempts, death threats and intimidation by organized criminal groups".
