Centro Catƒ³lico Multimedial (CCM), a Catholic news service, reported on 19 September 2016 that two Catholic priests and one staff-member of the local congregation were
kidnapped during the morning of 19 September in a church in Poza Rica, State of Veracruz (south-east Mexico). The church worker managed to escape but the two priests were found dead on the afternoon of the same day, bearing visible marks of torture. The motive for the murders is still unknown.
According to a
report by CCM published on 19 December 2015 and analyzed by the news platform Apiprensa on 10 January 2016, a total of
45 Catholics were killed and 2 reported missing over the last 25 years (1990 - 2015). Altogether, assaults against Catholic priests, monks and laymen increased by 120% in 2015. Mexico has long been the number one country in Latin America in terms of
killings of priests (see report dated 31 December 2014 by Excelsior) forcing many of them to
wear bulletproof vests while celebrating mass, as reported by BBC News on 16 February 2016.
Dennis Petri, persecution analyst at World Watch Research, comments: "Although the motive in this particular incident in Poza Rica is unknown, violence against representatives of the Catholic church has clearly been increasing over the last 25 years. It is very likely that the reported assaults are part of the persecution engine
Organized corruption and crime: Religious leaders, whose public statements or ministerial activity threaten the interests of drug cartels, are being systematically eliminated."
