Seminary closed in ‘failed state’

The Church hierarchy in Mexico has supported a bishop’s condemnation of the lawlessness in Michoacán state and elsewhere in the country, writes Jon Stibbs.

The president of the Bishops’ Conference, Francisco Robles Ortega, was among the signatories of a letter calling for peace and backing Bishop Miguel Patiño Velázquez of Apatzingan, who stated that Michoacán has “all the characteristics of a failed state”.

Criminality has forced Bishop Patiño Velázquez to close his seminary and move the seminarians to safety. He stated that the lack of security created by “crime organisations” has deteriorated, “obliging entire families to emigrate through fear”.

In their open letter, the bishops called on the authorities to act “quickly and effectively in the face of the injustice of abductions, kidnappings, murders”. Self-defence groups have sprung up in Michoacán to counter the Knights Templar drug cartel. On 26 October the cartel knocked out the electricity for more than 420,000 people.