Two Mexican gangs had taken refuge in the cathedral as they engaged in a bloody shoot-out.

Mexico's Lady of Guadalupe cathedral was left completely blasted with bullet holes and grenades. A beheaded body was left inside.

Urzúa said he stumbled upon the "heart-breaking situation" on Tuesday. The three children he found, aged one, nine and 11, had been abandoned in the war zone, he said.

Police found over 700 bullet casings, a grenade and a Chevrolet pickup truck which had been "completely charred."

Urzúa said the attack on the cathedral must have been intentional. There were "too many bullet" holes inside and out for them to be stray shots.

"I don't think that an armed gang can have something against us, against the Church. I don't want to think that, but this is the fact," he added.

"It's sad what we are experiencing, where we are living. It is not something passing, it's something permanent."

In April 2023 for instance, there were 567 first-degree murders recorded in the state of Chihuahua.

Enrique told reporters the civil authorities should do their jobs. "We feel alone," he said.

"We feel that there is no one who is with us, who accompanies us and protects us. May the Lord give you the necessary wisdom."

This year, 11,475 homicides have reportedly been recorded throughout Mexico.

Source

• Daily Star

The investigators are on a fact-finding and assistance mission as the world's second-largest Catholic country begins to reckon with decades of clergy sex abuse and cover-up.

Nuncio Franco Coppola said in January and December an email address the Catholic church in Mexico had opened to receive abuse allegations took in dozens of allegations, mostly accounts of cover ups.

He said although 217 priests are being investigated, there are other cases in which religious orders sent complaints directly to Rome, which means the number could be higher.

Investigators Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu will meet with church leaders and alleged victims during their week-long visit.

Auxiliary Bishop Alfonso Miranda Guardiola, general secretary of the bishops' conference said the Church had requested aid from the Vatican to help the youngest and most vulnerable in Mexico.

"We're confident it will improve the response to these cases, looking for civil and canonical justice under the principles of zero tolerance, so that no case goes unpunished in our Church," he said.

The Vatican embassy in Mexico City expressly wants victims to come forward to speak with the two prelates, offering them an email address to send their testimony, a phone number to call and total privacy and confidentiality.

Clerical sex abuse survivors have expressed skepticism over the Vatican investigative commission that will collect statements and information about abuse in Mexico.

Nonetheless, most said they would meet with the investigators.

"Only by speaking with them can you demand results," said survivor Biani López-Antúnez.

"The results of this visit must be measured exclusively by the facts because I'm tired of the fake actions that operate at all levels of the Church."

The Mexican bishops are hopeful the investigative process will bear fruit.

"We are certain it will help us respond better to these cases, looking for civil and canonical justice under the principle of ‘zero tolerance' so that there is no impunity in our church," the bishops said.

Scicluna and Bertomeu are part of a taskforce created last year by Pope Francis to assist in countries where the Church had no guidance for dealing with sexual abuse cases.

The two led the Vatican's 2018 investigation into sexual abuse in Chile, producing a 2,300-page report that sparked the resignation of several of the country's top bishops.

Source

• Time
• Reuters
• AP
• Image: NCR

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gómez, 67, was the conference's vice president, and in line with tradition where the vice president is elected president, there was little surprise when on Wednesday, he was elected on the first ballot.

When the results were announced, the room erupted in a standing ovation.

As well as the first Mexico-born US Bishops Conference president, Gómez is the first bishop elected to lead the conference to be associated with the very conservative and sometimes controversial Opus Dei.

Gómez however is considered a practical-minded conservative, and an outspoken advocate of a welcoming immigration policy that would include a path to citizenship for many immigrants living in the US illegally.

In August, after a gunman targeting Mexicans killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Gómez condemned white supremacy, noting that Spanish was spoken in North America before English was, reports CNA.

"Men and women do not become less than human, less a child of God, because they are 'undocumented,'" Gómez wrote.

"Yet, in our nation, it has become common to hear migrants talked about and treated as if they are somehow beneath caring about."

Gómez, who has relatives and friends on both sides of the US-Mexico border, describes the situation surrounding the border and the Trump Wall as "tragedy".

"Our encouragement to elected officials is to find a good, solid immigration reform that allows people to move legally", he said responding to the border-suffering.

Humbled by the other US Bishops he calls his election, "A blessing for the Latino community."

"He's a man of faith," Doris Quinania, who attended the celebration with a group from St. Frances X. Cabrini in Los Angeles, describes Gómez as 'a man of faith who has a heart for all the poor, especially immigrants'.

Following the election of Gómez, the US bishops chose Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron, 71, as the new vice president.

By tradition, that puts Vigneron in line to become Conference president in three years, although, at that point, he would be close to the mandatory retirement age of 75.

Sources

• CNA
• Associated Press

"The time has come to present a proposal based on the aim that when we obtain the presidency, we must not only seek to achieve material well-being, we must also seek well-being for the soul," Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says.

The favourite to win July's election told voters: "Just as we already have a political constitution, we are going to elaborate a moral constitution." Read more

The diocese says the parents of one of the nuns have been killed.

In addition, the school the nuns run had to close for several months last year due to threats from drug gangs operating in the area. Read more

The building is in the northern part of Mexico City near the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is considered is one of the world's most important Catholic shrines.

Occupants of the Bishops Conference building reported hearing the bomb go off and noticed broken glass and damage to the door when they went to check the source of the sound.

Experts in forensics, explosives and photography have been sent to the site to collect evidence. Once the preliminary investigation is completed, the case will be passed to the Mexican Attorney General's office.

There was no immediate word on possible suspects or motive.

A Tweet from Bishop Ramon Castro says he thinks the incident "reflects the situation in Mexico," where homicide rates are on the rise amid a drug war that's over a decade old

Three Catholic priests have been murdered in Mexico this year, bringing the number killed since 2013 up to 18. Some were murdered during robberies, extortions and kidnappings, where it is not clear if they were targeted because of their religion.

Source

• US News
• CNA
• Image: reportecatolicolaico.com

The attacker tried to slit Father Miguel Angel Machorro's throat, a witness said.

The suspect, who identified himself as John Rock Schild, told authorities that he is an American artist and invoked his right to remain silent," the District Attourney's office said.

Nobody knows what Schild's motive was.

Armando Martínez, a lawyer for the Mexican Archdiocese said they needed more information to draw any conclusions.

"We cannot talk about terrorism, we cannot talk about motives because we obviously have no significant facts," he said.

A report from Mexico's Catholic Multimedia Center says Mexico remained the most dangerous country in the world for priests in 2016 for the eighth year in a row.

The report goes on to say there has been an "alarming" increase in attacks on priests since President Enrique Peña Nieto entered office in 2012.

Violence against Catholics in Mexico has escalated.

At least 15 priests were murdered over the past few years in regions "blighted by violence and drug trafficking".

Source

• FoxNews
• Telesur
• Express
• Daily Express

But out of respect for the country that permits you do that, you tend to walk and work in silence, offering no political or public comment or opinion outside of preaching the gospel in word and more hopefully in action.

This is not from an undue fear because "the truth will set you free", but rather it is for respect. One realises that you don't have the same rights as the full citizens beside you and that the culture is not your own.

However when you are on the "underside" as usually I have found myself to be, you realise that what the institutional "status quo" says is often far from what the many poor and local people think and experience. Here, I might add it can refer to both church and state.

In our case here on the southern border of the USA with Mexico, it came to my attention the comment of one of Brownsville's daughters when on the 4th April she represented her region at the Capitol in Washington DC with a delegation of the "Southern Border Communities Coalition" which travelled there to manifest the feeling of many people from the southern border who live on the "underside".

"Southern Border Communities Coalition" is a movement which stretches from San Diego on the Pacific coast to Brownsville here in the Gulf of Mexico. Like the nation-wide and larger "ACLU" (American Civil Liberties Union) the former tries to make known that here on the southern border, the people don't just sit under cactus bushes and vegetate but are real people who are affected by the decisions made in Washington and state capitals off times without reference to them.

Proof of that is in this little pudding quoted below: At a recent meeting of the "Southern Border Communities Coalition" delegation at the Capitol, Washington DC, our lady delegate from here had this to say:

"Daily life is changing for the worse in my border community. My neighbors live in fear that a traffic infraction may turn into a deportation. Local police are being asked to enforce immigration laws and that violates the trust with the community.

Now the president is proposing spending our taxpayer dollars on expensive and unnecessary walls. We already have walls. I live right next to one that divides our community. Our community is poor. More walls will not alleviate our poverty, pave our streets, or provide the public services we need. Walls are not the answer to anything."

• Tony O'Connor is a New Zealand-born Marist priest who has worked in Latin America for over 30 years

He has since been released, apparently in exchange for a ransom. Read more

Mexico opposes the wall.

In an editorial entitled "Treason against Homeland" published in a Mexican news journal the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico said:

"Any company that intends to invest in the fanatic Trump wall would be immoral, but above all, their owners and shareholders will be considered traitors to the homeland."

The Archdiocese published a similar editorial a month ago.

The Archdiocese said the Government was "responding timidly" to Mexican companies considering opportunities to build the wall.

They said they were surprised at the Mexican government's economic authorities, because they have not moved against these companies' aims to profit from the wall.

They also said the wall would foster "prejudice and discrimination".

Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo said the government did not plan to stop businesses from helping with the wall's construction.

Instead, he said Mexicans would judge and base future buying decisions on "which brands are loyal to the national identity, and which are not."

"I think your prestige will align with your own interests in not participating in the wall," he told the companies.

Source

• ABC News
• Fox News
• Image: Angies Diary

Their bullet-riddled bodies were found in the southern Mexican state of Michoacan.

The victims - four young men - are in the latest killings in the region.

They were Jesus Aguilar Alejandro Ayala, 22-year-old day laborer; Wilibaldo Hernandez, 21, a farmer; Jesus Alberto Lopez, 24, who raised pigs; and Adam Valencia, 25. Read more

The end-of-year collection - to fund Asunción seminary, where he taught - had been substantial, so it was late when he finished counting the donations. At 11.30pm, he locked the money in the cathedral and drove back to the seminary. But the priest who locals nicknamed Goyito ("Little Greg") never arrived.

Fr Fidencio Avellaneda, his colleague at the seminary, describes what happened next: "The seminarians say a group of armed men were waiting for him, because they wanted to rob him, thinking he had the money. When he refused [to give them money], they took him away."

The disappearance of the well-liked priest - known for his voracious reading habits and crunching tackle on the football pitch - marked a turning point for locals. Another priest of the diocese, Fr Ascensión Acuña Osorio, had been found dead in a river in suspicious circumstances the previous September.

November had brought news that the body of a third cleric, Fr John Ssenyondo, had been discovered in a mass grave in nearby Ocotitlán.

After Fr López Gorostieta disappeared, Ciudad Altamirano's bishop, Maximino Martínez, led 30 priests and hundreds of protesters through the streets, demanding the priest's return. But the protests were in vain: Padre Goyito's body was found on Christmas Day, strangled and dumped at the edge of the Acapulco-Iguala highway.

"It hit us hard," says Fr Avellaneda. "Gregorio was very dedicated, and he went about his ministry with real affection for the people.

"The real challenge is the same as ever: to stay safe. I no longer travel after dark, except when a parishioner is very sick. When I do, I always travel accompanied." Continue reading

Source & Image

• Catholic Herald article by Tim MacGabhann

The priests were working in Poza Rica, which is a city in Veracruz state.

In all, 14 priests have been murdered in Mexico since 2012.

Pope Francis has expressed "profound sadness" for the murders.

He condemned the attacks on the lives and dignity of the people involved.

He also urged the clergy and all members of the diocese to continue to pursue their mission

Mexico's Catholic bishops also condemned the killing.

"We express our pain and indignation at the violence committed against them," the Bishops said in a statement.

"In these moments of pain and powerlessness in the face of the tragic violence we pray to the heavens for the eternal rest of our brothers and ask Our Lord for the conversion of their killers.

"From the authorities, we expect an investigation clear up these acts and that those responsible be brought to justice."

Poza Rica and its surrounding territory has been the scene of drug-related gang violence and trafficking for many years.

But it is unclear why the Catholic priests were targeted, Vatican Radio says.

Pope Francis offered prayers for the Mexican priests at the Angelus.

He also put his support behind the ongoing pro-family and pro-life efforts of the Mexican Bishops.

Source

• Global Pulse
• Vatican Radio
• Image:foxnews.com

Desde la Fe, the weekly of the archdiocese of Mexico, wrote of a statement from Sr Lucia dos Santos.

This comes as Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced his intention to promote same-sex marriage in the country, the Catholic News Agency reported.

The Mexican paper recalled comments Cardinal Carlo Caffarra made to the Italian press in 2008, three years after the death of Sr Lucia.

Cardinal Caffarra was asked about a prophecy of Sr Lucia that spoke about "the final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan".

The cardinal said several years previously, he had written to Sr Lucia's bishop, asking for her prayers.

This came after St John Paul II had commissioned Cardinal Caffarra to plan and establish the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family

The cardinal received an unexpected response, bearing Sr Lucia's signature.

"In that letter we find written: ‘The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about marriage and the family'," the cardinal said.

"Don't be afraid, she added, because whoever works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought against and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.

"Then she concluded: ‘nevertheless, Our Lady has already crushed his head'."

Cardinal Caffarra added that "speaking again with John Paul II, you could feel that the family was the core, since it has to do with the supporting pillar of creation, the truth of the relationship between man and woman, between the generations".

"If the foundational pillar is damaged, the entire building collapses and we're seeing this now, because we are right at this point and we know it."

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: The Call to Fatima

Francis was at a stadium in Morella on Tuesday when the incident occurred.

He was greeting people at an open air Mass for youth.

Video footage showed the Pope stopping in front of a man in a wheelchair.

At this point, two arms reached out to grab him, not letting go even as he lost his balance and was pushed onto the man.

Aides and security personnel stopped the Pope from falling to the ground.

And although the Pontiff recovered and kissed the man in the wheelchair on the head, he did not hide his irritation, the Daily Mail reported.

The head of the Catholic Church yelled: "No seas egoísta. Qué te pasó, no seas egoísta", which translates to "Don't be selfish, don't be selfish".

Francis took a couple of steps back as appeals came over the public address system asking the crowd not to clump together.

The Pontiff continued to wave to people and handed out rosaries for a few minutes more before leaving again.

Speaking after the incident, Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, said that the papal scolding was a "normal human reaction" to certain admirers' "excessive enthusiasm".

The Pope has said in the past that he is prone to anger, but that his bad tempers do not last.

During the trip to Mexico, Pope Francis has urged Mexico's young people to resist the lure of easy money from drug dealers and to instead build up their communities by valuing themselves as the wealth of the country.

Sources

• Daily Mail
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Belfast Telegraph

On a Fox Business Network show, last week, Mr Trump was asked what he made of Pope Francis being at the border, standing with migrants.

"So I think that the Pope is a very political person," Mr Trump responded over the phone.

"I think that he doesn't understand the problems our country has.

"I don't think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico."

Mr Trump added: "Mexico got him to do it because Mexico wants to keep the border just the way it is because they're making a fortune and we're losing."

The Republican Party contender has proposed deporting all undocumented immigrants and making Mexico pay for the construction of the wall to keep them out.

Pope Francis is scheduled to travel to the border in Juarez, Mexico, on Wednesday.

He plans to offer prayer and show solidarity with suffering people there.

Catholic leaders said the Pontiff will send an unmistakeable message.

"He will be calling on us to look with compassion on a group of people who have suffered terribly," said Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso to CNN.

"And perhaps that will lead people to seek out some different solutions than are now being proposed."

The Pope's trip to Mexico comes weeks after the Supreme Court - six of whose justices were Catholics at the time - agreed to hear a challenge to President Obama's plan to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Last month, the US Justice Department announced plans to repatriate some of the 313,000 people who crossed the border illegally last year.

"I don't think the Holy Father's trip to Juarez is political," said Fr Timothy Kesicki, president of the US-based Jesuit Conference.

"But how could it not have political overtones? It's going to be drawing a lot of attention to immigration at a time when we are having debates about it."

Sources

• Politico.com
• CNN
• New York Times
• Image: Slate.com

At issue is the annulment of the previous marriage of actor Angélica Rivera, who became Enrique Peña Nieto's wife 19 months before he was elected president.

The Guardian reported documents obtained by investigative reporters appear to show the annulment was fast tracked.

Mr Peña Nieto's first wife, Mónica Pretelini, died in 2007 after suffering an epileptic seizure.

Ms Rivera, a popular soap opera star, was married to TV producer José Alberto Castro from 2004 to 2008.

They have three daughters together, including two who were born out of wedlock.

The archdiocese of Mexico City annulled their marriage in 2009.

The archdiocese noted that the ceremony had taken place on a beach in Acapulco and exhibited "defects of canonical form".

But the newly revealed church documents cast doubt on the archdiocese's story.

A copy of Castro and Rivera's Catholic marriage certificate appears to show a proper church ceremony took place in a Mexico City parish in December, 2004.

This was before the Acapulco beach service and in contradiction of archdiocesan claims that it did not take place in an authorised house of worship.

Archdiocese documents cited Ms Rivera and three witnesses - all her sisters - who claimed they did not "understand" they were signing a church marriage certificate at the ceremony in Mexico City.

The archdiocesan tribunal held that the priest who performed the Acapulco ceremony had tricked Ms Rivera into marrying at a church without her knowledge, with another priest officiating, and then pretended the ceremony at the beach was the real thing, when it wasn't.

A spokesman for Mexico City archdiocese, Fr Hugo Valdemar, denied there had been any irregularities in the annulment and told the Guardian the annulment "followed the proper process".

He added that the original marriage in the Mexico City parish was celebrated with the intention that it would be repeated in Acapulco by a priest lacking the proper permission to perform it.

Fr Valdemar also denied any political motives for granting the annulment.

In 2012, the Roman Rota absolved the priest who presided at the Acapulco wedding of any ecclesiastical wrongdoing in Ms Rivera's marriage.

Sources

• The Guardian
• Crux
• Image: CNN Mexico

In an op-ed piece for the New York Daily News, Cardinal Dolan likened Mr Trump's views to a "virulent strain" of American "nativism".

"Nativists believed the immigrant to be dangerous, and that America was better off without them," the cardinal wrote.

Cardinal Dolan recalled how, before becoming a bishop, he taught American religious history to university students, dedicating a portion of the class to "the ugly phenomenon called nativism".

Cardinal Dolan described nativism with the same words as scholar and author Ray Allen Billington, calling it "organised, white, Protestant antagonism toward the Catholic immigrant".

He said that he is not telling anyone who they should vote for.

But he stressed that as a Catholic "I take seriously the Bible's teaching that we are to welcome the stranger, one of the most frequently mentioned moral imperatives in both the Old and New Testament".

"I wish I were in the college classroom again, so I could roll out my 'Trump card' to show the students that I was right. Nativism is alive, well - and apparently popular!"

Trump, in his speech launching his presidential campaign, had said that "the US has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems. And these aren't the best and the finest".

"When Mexico sends its people they're not sending their best, they're sending people that have a lot of problems . . . they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some I assume are good people," Trump said.

In a June 28 interview with CNN, Trump spoke of making Mexico build a wall along the US - Mexican border, saying that a wall is needed in certain areas.

He said he would force Mexico to build the wall "because we give them a fortune".

Mr Trump is one of the contenders to be the Republican Party candidate for the presidency.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic News Agency

Some 200 people were taking part in a procession on the main street of Mazapil in Zacatecas state when the truck ran into them.

The dump truck "was apparently left without brakes and struck the crowd", which was heading to a Catholic church, an official from the state's civil protection agency said.

The truck driver fled the scene after the incident.

The pilgrims had been travelling to the San Gregorio Magno church in Mazapil since last Sunday as part of a celebration for a patron saint.

Continue reading

On May 20, the ceremony was carried out behind closed doors at the cathedral of San Luis Potosí.

The Archbishop Emeritus of Guadalajara, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, presided.

Also participating were Archbishop Jesús Carlos Cabrero of San Luis Potosí, Spanish demonologist and exorcist Fr José Antonio Fortea, and a smaller group of priests and lay people.

Archbishop Cabrero said the reserved character of the ceremony was intended to avoid any misguided interpretations of the ritual.

The great exorcism followed a series of events the bishops see as linked to the presence and influence of Satan.

Mexico has been subject to a growing wave of violence, and according to official figures, there have been some 100,000 abortions performed in Mexico City since the practice was legalised in the capital in 2007.

With the exorcism, the bishops asked God to end the spiral of drug-related violence in the country, as well as abortion.

Fr Fortea told Breitbart that "undoubtedly the abortion, Satanism, corruption, the cult of ‘holy' death and the legalisation of sexual aberrations have caused great satanic infestation throughout Mexico".

Explaining how an entire nation can be infested with demons, he replied: "To the extent sin increases more and more in a country, to that extent it becomes easier for the demons to tempt (people)".

Fr Fortea warned that the great exorcism would not solve all of Mexico's problems in a day.

But the exorcism would have "positive repercussions", he said.

Fr Fortea noted that St Francis of Assisi had exorcised the entire Italian city of Arezzo, although the saint did this in a "private manner".

The priest said that every bishop in Mexico should celebrate the great exorcism in his own diocese.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Breitbart
• Image: Lonely Planet