From Crux:
Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church is criticizing what it considers a campaign to smear three murdered priests by suggesting they were involved in questionable behavior.
The spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico City said Monday that reports by prosecutors and local media have sought to cover up authorities’ inability to reign in drug cartels. Two of the slain priests were killed in Veracruz state last week. On Sunday officials confirmed that another cleric had been shot to death in Michoacan state after being abducted. Veracruz state prosecutors alleged that the first two priests had been drinking with their killers before they disappeared. Local media published a photo suggesting the third priest had been last seen with a young boy.
“In these cases it has become clear that state governments that cannot handle the drug cartels are criminalizing the victims, depicting some as drunks and another as a pedophile, making it look like the crimes were not related to drug cartels but because of some immoral conduct,” said Father Hugo Valdemar Romero, spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico City. “To physical death they are adding moral assassination, slandering the priests and holding them up to ridicule,” Romero said, “and that has caused deep indignation in the church,” Romero said.
And today we celebrate...