Mexico's Roman Catholic Church on Monday harshly criticised what it called a campaign to smear three priests murdered in less than a week by suggesting the victims had been involved in questionable behaviour.
The outrage came in response to a state prosecutor's allegations that two of the dead clerics had been drinking with their killers beforehand and media reports suggesting the third had last been seen with a young boy.
"In these cases it has become clear that state governments that cannot handle the drug cartels are criminalising the victims, depicting some as drunks and another as a paedophile, making it look like the crimes were not related to drug cartels but because of some immoral conduct," said the Fr Hugo Valdemar Romero, spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico City.
