Gunmen shoot a priest and two seminary students in the back. Federal police storm a Mass to capture a suspected drug kingpin. Priests pray with the families of murdered men, then face killers in the confessional.

Mexico's Roman Catholic clergy, increasingly caught in the middle of the nation's drug war, are meeting this week to draft a strategy for coping with the violence, aided by advice from colleagues who faced similar threats in Colombia and Italy.

"We have become hostages in these violent confrontations between the drug cartels living among us," said Archbishop Felipe Aguirre, who works in Acapulco, located in Guerrero state where the priest and seminary students were killed in June.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Mexico • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

1. Ad Orientem wrote: I feel a certain sense of pain for these priests.  But I also am saddened by the widespread silence on the part of the clergy of Mexico in the face of this pernicious evil that is overwhelming their country.  In particular the silence from the bishops is deafening.  Challenging the drug cartels is probably an engraved invitation to martyrdom.  So I suppose one must not judge too harshly.  Still, it would have been heartening if there were a single bishop who stood up in the pulpit and denounced these assassins and excommunicated the lot forbidding even burial in consecrated ground. In ICXC John November 11, 2:05 pm | [comment link]

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