“I have been talking about the need for a social pact. It is not a pact simply with the people who are doing evil, but a pact with the whole of society and even that the criminals could enter in some way,” the priest told the Milenio newspaper.
Noriega was held by an armed group a few days ago at a checkpoint when he was traveling to the neighboring state of Jalisco. “What caught my attention is that it was neither the National Guard nor the Army, they were people from one of the criminal groups,” he explained to the local press.
The priest’s criticism of the government’s security strategy intensified after two Jesuit priests were murdered on June 27 in a church in a remote indigenous community in the state of Chihuahua (north).
The Conference of the Mexican Episcopate called on Monday in a statement “no more violence.”
“Our commitment is for dialogue to build a path of justice and reconciliation that leads us to peace. We want to open horizons of dialogue to build peace”, pointed out the episcopate.
In his usual morning conference, the country’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, expressed his support for the Church’s “forgiveness” proposal, but clarified that his government “does not negotiate” with criminals.
Mexico is hit by a spiral of violence that has left some 340,000 dead since 2006, when a controversial anti-drug offensive was launched with the participation of the military.
Most of these deaths are attributed to organized crime gangs involved in crimes such as drug trafficking, fuel theft, kidnapping and extortion, among others.
The entrance Mexican bishop proposes “social pact” that includes drug traffickers was first published in diary TODAY.
