Bishops, Jesuits, and other religious communities in Mexico urged their followers to bring photographs of victims of violence to churches across the country on July 24.
The Mexican Bishops’ Conference, the Conference of Major Superiors of Religious Orders of Mexico, and the Mexican Province of the Society of Jesus invited people to bring “photographs of friends or family members who have lost their lives as a result of violence or who are missing” to Catholic churches in a message issued on July 18.
“We ask all the priests to offer a special prayer for them, praying for truth and justice, and solace for their families, all of this as a gesture of welcome and remembrance of the suffering of Christ in our country,” they said.
The Mexican bishops, religious superiors, and Jesuits said they were “happy and grateful for the response that the different parish communities, lay movements, and institutes of consecrated life have had in response to the call for the Day of Prayer for Peace.”
They also thanked “the solidarity of other religious traditions and social groups to join this gesture of unity for our country.”
“We are experiencing a time of grace to rebuild our social coexistence so damaged by violence; once again, the Risen Jesus appears to us, when we were confused with the doors locked, to send us out to work for peace,” the religious leaders said.
In the midst of the growing violence that recently claimed the lives of two Jesuit priests, the Mexican Bishops’ Conference, the Conference of Major Superiors of Mexican Religious Orders, and the Mexican Province of the Society of Jesus requested that July be designated as a month of prayer for peace in the country.
As part of that month of prayer, they requested that on July 10th, “all the priests, religious men and women who have been murdered in the country” be remembered at all Masses, and they encouraged people to bring their photographs to Catholic churches.
They requested in their July 18 message that July 31, the feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola, “be a day of prayer for the conversion of the perpetrators and that we are able to do ‘the better politics’ that Pope Francis calls for in Chapter 5 of his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, focused on encounter, dialogue, consensus, and the restoration of the community.”
One of Mexico’s most violent times in history is under underway. More than 121,000 homicides have been reported in the first three and a half years of the six-year term of the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which may end up surpassing the more than 156,000 murders committed over the course of the entire six-year term of his predecessor, Enrique Pea Nieto.
Official statistics show that 14,405 killings occurred in Mexico between January 1 and July 17 of this year.
18 of the 50 cities on the most recent list of the world’s most violent cities, released in March by the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice, are in Mexico.
Zamora, located in the Mexican state of Michoacán, is the most deadly city in the entire world.
The rising violence in the nation has not spared the Catholic Church. One cardinal and 57 Catholic priests have been slain in Mexico during the past 30 years, according to a recent research by the Catholic Multimedia Center.