ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 29, 2023 / 16:00 pm
This past week, the Catholic Church in the Mexican state of Jalisco held various prayer initiatives with the relatives of victims of forced disappearance, a crime that has plagued the state in recent decades.
In Latin America to say someone “was disappeared” means that the person was abducted, often by organized crime, an authoritarian government, or a rebel group and may or may not be alive.
According to the National Registry of Disappeared and Unlocated Persons, from Jan. 1, 1962, to Aug. 28, 2023, there were 111,068 disappeared persons throughout the country, 14,889 of whom are from Jalisco, which leads the nation in this crime.
The archbishop of Guadalajara, Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, offered a Mass on Sunday, Aug. 27, at the Shrine of the Martyrs of Christ the King for the thousands of disappeared persons and their families. The Mass was held in the context of the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances, which is commemorated on Aug. 30.