Call to protect priests from drug gangs

In a week when the Pope announced a new cardinal in Mexico, where the Church struggles with drug trafficking, people trafficking and dire poverty, statements from church leaders drew attention to the seriousness of these problems, writes Isabel de Bertodano.

Shortly after Archbishop Alberto Suárez Inda was named a cardinal, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference called on the Mexican federal authorities to do more to protect priests from violence.

“Organised crime does not tolerate priests,” said Fr Omar Sotelo, director of the media arm of the bishops’ conference which last week said Mexico had become the most dangerous country in Latin America to work as a priest. “We call on the authorities to pay attention to this phenomenon.”

Fr Sotelo said that the work of priests was irritating to criminal gangs. “In their pastoral work, their work with migrants, priests are troublesome for criminals.”

In an interview with El Universal newspaper he added that those who should be protecting priests had become so mixed up with criminality that they were as much a problem as the gangs.

Cardinal Francisco Robles demanded that political candidates do not “enslave the poor” and use them to win votes in forthcoming state elections in Jalisco. “The poor can become enslaved, used as objects,” he said.