«Father Marcelo Perez was committed to the promotion of justice and peace among the original peoples in Mexico, especially in the community of Simojovel, accompanying the victims of violence in the rural area of Pantelhó, in Chiapas». This is how he remembers it Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, bishop emeritus of San Cristóbal de las Casas, a symbolic place of the struggles of the original communities for their rights often ignored by the State and multinationals, interested in a subsoil rich in raw materials as well as its waters and forests.
Father Marcelo belonged to the Tzotzil ethnic group, due to complaints about the dignity of populations living in a situation devoid of security and rights, he had suffered numerous threats, a story that ended with a murder, on October 20, 2024. His death occurred in San Cristóbal de las Casas, a historic city in Chiapas, while after the seven in the morning mass he went to the parish of Guadalupe. He was driving a white van when he received numerous shots that stopped a life full of activism, marches, protests and denunciations. Everything for the poor of Chiapas, the indigenous people of the South of the country.
The Mexican priest is one of the many martyrs that the Church remembers with vigils and prayers today, March 24, on the Day of Missionary Martyrs. In the last seven years they have been counted 13 priests killed in Mexico. Together with Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez we find Father Bertoldo Pantaleón Estrada in Guerrero, a crossroads of drug trafficking and a territory in constant struggle between local gangs, and Father Ernesto Baltazar Hernández Vilchis in the State of Mexico, a territory in which migrant trafficking and drug dealing are a land contested by Latin American crime.
In addition to violent deaths, numerous attacks have been recorded against nuns, priests and even bishops, without forgetting kidnappings and extortions. There are many committed lay people, especially in the villages of the great country who have suffered threats and attacks to defend the rights of personal dignity. As many as 23 women and men, volunteers working to protect human rights present in various parishes, lost their lives during their mission.
For this reason, from 30 January to 1 February 2026 in Guadalajara at the ITESO, the Jesuit University, more than 1200 leaders from various realities of civil society, religious, academics, entrepreneurs, politicians and representatives of civil society, returned to the Second National Meeting for Peace, an open space to think and propose a common path that can respond to and heal the wounds caused by violence, share peacebuilding methodologies and articulate proposals in this delicate moment that the nation is experiencing. A movement promoted by bishops and representatives of religious orders born to mend a torn fabric, that of respect for the person, in a context of violence and injustice.
In the world there will be 17 missionaries killed in 2025, among them we find priests, nuns, seminarians and lay people who have testified with their lives to their love for the Gospel according to the annual report of Agenzia Fides. Martyrs are present all over the planet. In 2025 in Africa we find 10 missionaries (six priests, two seminarians, two catechists) murdered. On the American continent four missionaries (two priests and two nuns) lost their lives, in Asia a priest and a lay person. Even in Europe there is a victim in Poland.
