“Mexico has been carried away by the anti-Christian trend that comes from the West. The vandalism attacks on the churches, the buildings, the attacks on the religious, are always against the Catholics, not against the 22 mosques that exist in the country,” she pointed out.
“Mexico has been losing traditional family religiosity for decades,” she added.
For the year 2000, according to INEGI, Catholics represented 89.7% of the population. Twenty years later the percentage decreased to 77.7%, while an increase in Protestant Christians and people “without religion” was noted.
For Szymanski, in Mexico, “we have a significant mixture of ignorance with a lack of social cohesion that makes it seem natural or normal to attack the institutions, the Catholic Church, and everything that it represents.”
“The notion that it’s an actual crime is lost,” she said. However, such acts are prohibited under Mexican law.
Drug trafficking and murdered priests
Father Omar Sotelo, director of the Multimedia Catholic Center (CCM), also interviewed by ACI Prensa May 25, noted that “for more than 10 years, Mexico has been the most dangerous country to exercise the priesthood in all of Latin America, and it is one of the primary places in the entire world.”
According to a CCM report, between 1990 and 2022, 63 priests were murdered in Mexico, including the archbishop of Guadalajara, Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo. Just in the last four years, during the current administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, nine priests have been killed.
According to the report “Missionaries murdered in the year 2022” by the Vatican Fides foundation, Mexico recorded three homicides of priests last year. Only Nigeria recorded a higher number: Four priests were killed there.
“In theory,” he stated, “it’s not a country that has the problems of war or something like that. However, it’s one of the primary countries where exercising the priesthood is dangerous.”
“In Mexico, we have counted at least 25 or 26 churches that have been desecrated, attacked, robbed, looted, violated in a week,” he explained.
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For Sotelo, “it’s a clear sign that organized crime has practically overrun the authorities.”
He also noted that there are places in the country where “there are no police” because drug traffickers are the ones who govern those areas.
“Drug trafficking has practically positioned itself strategically throughout the national territory and they have put many of the authorities in check,” he lamented.
In this crisis situation, he explained, a priest “works 24 hours a day, seven days a week” as a “social stabilizer,” giving “aid, defense, protection to all and to the migrant” as well as “health services.”
“The priests compete against organized crime. When they eliminate [a priest], they send two very strong messages: One, if I am able to kill a priest, I can kill whomever they want. Second, by eliminating a priest they are not killing just one person, they are attacking this entire community and this stability,” Sotelo explained.
“Then a narco-culture, a narco-politics, a narco-economy is created,” he warned.