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 said on Tuesday.
Javier Campos, 79, and Joaquin Mora, 80, were on Monday slain 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.
Photo: Reuters
The gang apparently pursued and caught him, and killed all three.
Chihuahua Governor Maria Campos said a third man was killed, without identifying him, but Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said during his daily news briefing that the man fleeing the gunmen was also killed.
The state later identified the third man as a tourist guide, and said he had been kidnapped and taken to the church by the gunmen.
The governor said the killings caused “deep anger, indignation and pain” and “shook us to our deepest depths.”
Authorities have information about possible suspects in the killings, Lopez Obrador said, adding that the area has a strong organized crime presence.
Violence has plagued the Sierra Tarahumara for years. The rugged, pine-clad region is home to the indigenous group of the same name, and Cerocahui is near where Chihuahua 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.
“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.”
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