SÃO PAULO, Brazil – People in Mexico have been shocked over the March 16 murder of eight teenagers and young men in a rural village in the municipality of Salamanca, which is located in the crime-ridden Guanajuato State.

The Church is now promoting several activities for peace, as part of the national agenda developed by Catholics, scholars, and activists in order to combat violence in the North American country.

The young men were in an area of sports courts on Sunday night, along with other groups, talking and having a beer, when a truck arrived, and a group of men went down and began shooting at them. Four of them were instantly killed, while three others died as they were receiving medical attention. The eighth member of the group, Juan Martin – one of the three underage victims – died three days later due to his wounds. At least five victims remain in the hospital.

While in most similar massacres the police and the media outlets are fast to accuse the victims of having connections with criminal activities, in this case the opposite occurred. From the start, it was reported that the boys were students or workers and weren’t involved with illicit acts. They had ties to the local parish and attended Sunday Masses. Four of them were active members of the diocesan Youth Pastoral Ministry.

“I was told that armed men just started to randomly shoot. It was almost like an act of terror. A 9-year-old boy was also hit by a bullet,” Deacon Bryan Saldaña, in charge of the communications of the Diocese of Irapuato, told Crux.

Saldaña visited the small village of San José de Mendoza, where the boys lived, and talked to their families and friends during the week.

“The families are perplexed and demand justice from the authorities,” he said.

That’s a small, rural town, in which people make a living from agriculture and with money sent by their relatives who went to the United States. Like most localities in Guanajuato, which is considered the most violent State in Mexico, it suffers with the actions of drug cartels and other armed groups. Only in the first two months of 2025, more than 500 murders occurred in the State.

“The victims’ families have been receiving help from the Church and from their community. On Mar. 19, the parish was going to celebrate the festivity of its patron, Saint Joseph. The commemoration was canceled, and part of the funds were given to them,” Saldaña told Crux.

Bishop Enrique Díaz Díaz of Irapuato celebrated the funeral Mass, during which he prayed for “those who dedicate themselves to do evil things,” asking for their “conversion and life change,” especially all “the youth who have fallen on the webs of evil.”

In a statement released two days after the massacre, he expressed the diocese’s solidarity with the victims’ relatives and announced a number of activities that would be promoted in order to honor the boys and to demand peace, including a novena and a march against violence on Mar. 29.

On the same day, the Bishops’ Conference released a declaration in which it said it was “deeply outraged” with the murders.

“That fact makes us reflect on the violence that plagues our nation, which became a cancer for our society; delinquency presupposes impunity, manifests despise for life and makes it prevail insecurity in our vital community spaces; such a reality harms the hearts of all Mexicans, nobody can feel outside of it,” the letter read.

The episcopate invited all authorities, civic entities, businessmen, and communicators to take on responsibility for peace building.

Along with other Catholic institutions – including the Mexican Society of Jesus, and numerous civic organizations and experts – the episcopate promoted over the past couple of years the National Dialogue for Peace. It is based on a lengthy document encompassing seven major themes – social fabric, security, justice, prisons, teenagers, governance, and human rights – and including dozens of measures that should be taken in order to bring peace to Mexico.

The Church institutions connected to such an agenda also released a statement, in which they lamented the killings and called for several national activities against violence.

“Those actions include positioning eight candles in the altar during Masses and bringing roses to public squares in memory of the victims of murder in the country,” explained Jesuit priest Jorge Atilano, Executive Director of the National Dialogue for Peace.

Atilano lamented the growing violence in Guanajuato and other parts of Mexico but said that “there are reasons for hope now.”

“President Claudia Sheinbaum has been more open to dialogue than President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. We’ve been in continuous communication with her administration, and we’ve been elaborating together suggestions for policies connected to our agenda against violence,” he told Crux.

Since November of 2024, work groups have been debating themes connected to the reconstruction of the social fabric, for instance, gathering Church people, universities, and authorities.

“I think we’re making progress,” Atilano said.