A Mexican bishop has credited the Virgin Mary with saving his life when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle during a pastoral visit to one of the country’s most dangerous regions.
Bishop José de Jesús González Hernández, who now leads the Diocese of Chilpancing–Chilapa in the region of Guerrero, recounted the incident during his homily at Sunday Mass in Chilapa’s Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 August.
The attack, he said, took place during the early days of his episcopal ministry in the Prelature of Jesús María–El Nayar, where he served from 2010 to 2022.
Before beginning his tour through the mountainous territory of the prelature – an area spanning parts of the Nayarit, Durango, Jalisco and Zacatecas regions – Bishop González Hernández visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Huajicori to entrust his mission to the Virgin Mary under the title Our Lady of Remedies.
According to ACI Presnsa, the Bishop recalled praying: “Beautiful Virgin, you are the shepherdess … you know the land well and the roads well. I commend myself to you.”
Not long afterwards, while travelling in a pickup truck near the regional border with Durango, armed men opened fire on the vehicle.
“Not a single bullet hit us,” the bishop said.
The attackers, realising they had mistaken the bishop for someone else, apologised, offered to pay for the damage and even asked for his blessing.
Although still shaken, as “my blood sugar was going up and down”, the bishop blessed the gunmen, remarking that, as the pastor of the territory, “They are also my children."
He believes the Virgin Mary intervened that day, explaining: “I imagine she said, ‘Don’t hit them, let them go away’… and many bullets went to waste. The Virgin Mary was there.”
Bishop Hernández's first episcopal appointment was in one of the most remote and impoverished regions of Mexico, home to Indigenous communities in largely inaccessible mountain villages. It is also a zone where drug cartels compete violently for control of territory, something the bishop was keenly aware of when he began his ministry there.
His current position serving the Diocese of Chilpancing–Chilapa also places him in one of Mexico’s most violent states, with frequent clashes between rival gangs, kidnappings and attacks on clergy. Several priests have been killed in the region in recent years, prompting bishops to call for greater protection from the authorities.
The bishop’s experience echoes other accounts from Mexican clergy who believe their survival in dangerous encounters was due to divine intervention.
Photo: Picture of bullet casings on the ground after a shootout in Culiacan, Sinaloa State, Mexico, 7 January 2023. (Photo by JUAN CARLOS CRUZ/AFP via Getty Images.)
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