CSW is calling for a full and transparent investigation into the murder of a Roman Catholic priest who went missing on Saturday 4 October while returning to his parish of San Cristóbal in Mezcala Municipality from the town of Atzcala in Cocula Municipality, a journey that should have taken around 30 minutes by car, in Mexico’s Guerrero State.  

On 6 October the body of 59-year-old Father Bertoldo Pantaléon Estrada was discovered having sustained multiple gunshot wounds inside his vehicle on the highway, around 90km to the south of Atzcala, and 65km south of Mezcala. 

While the authorities announced the arrest of a suspect on Friday 10 October, there continue to be questions around the murder. Within a few days of the discovery of the body, the authorities claimed that the priest’s chauffeur had murdered him, but this was rejected by his diocese based on the fact that Father Pantaléon Estrada did not have a chauffeur.  

The man arrested on 10 October, identified by the authorities only by his first name and an initial, Miguel Ángel N, has been described as an acquaintance of the priest. He has reportedly given contradictory statements about where he last saw the priest the day he went missing and it is unclear if he acted alone or in coordination with others. No explanation has been provided for why the priest had apparently travelled so far south of his parish.  

The area where Father Pantaléon Estrada served as a priest is characterised by the presence of multiple organised criminal groups linked to the trafficking of illegal narcotics, two of which, Los Ardillos and Los Tacos, have been engaged in violent conflict. In 2018 Father Germain Muñiz Garcia, also a parish priest in Mezcala, was shot dead along with another priest, Father Iván Añorve Jaimes, in a highway ambush. Over the past year, a number of political and government figures in Guerrero have been assassinated, including the mayor of the state capital, Chilpancingo, in October 2024, with the number of violent incidents escalating in recent weeks.  

In a panel discussion about the murder of Father Pantaléon Estrada on the news programme Sacro y Profano, Guillermo Ganzanini of the Catholic Multimedia Center explained that confidence in the investigation into Father Pantaléon Estrada’s murder, like those into similar cases, is low:  ‘Unfortunately we have a paper with eight columns of news but continuity [of the coverage] on the case fades. We don’t know what has happened with the families, we don’t know what happened in the interrogations, there is no official answer from the institutions about the result of the investigations.’ 

CSW Director of Advocacy Anna Lee Stangl said: ‘The violent killing of Father Bartoldo Pantaléon Estrada is yet another in a chain of murders of church leaders in Guerrero and across the country over the past two decades, making Mexico one of the deadliest countries in the world for priests and other religious leaders. We join in the calls for a full and transparent investigation into this horrific murder and call on the Mexican authorities at both the state and federal levels to ensure that all of those responsible for Father Pantaléon Estrada’s death are held to account and the motive behind this murder firmly established.’ 

Note to Editors: 

1. In September 2014 the remains of Father John Ssenyondo, a Ugandan missionary priest who was forcibly disappeared in April of the same year, were found in a mass grave. He is believed to have been assassinated by an organised criminal group.