Catholic leaders throughout the Americas are expressing grief and outrage on the killing of Juan Antonio López, a Honduran environmental activist and native Catholic leader, in Tocoa, in northeastern Honduras, on September 14.
López, described by friends as his local bishop’s right-hand man, was shot dead by several men as he left church Saturday night, in line with Reuters. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said López had recently received threats from a gang member, a Honduran businessperson and a mining company representative.
A member of the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods in Tocoa, López had advocated against the harmful impacts of an open-pit iron oxide mine. His group had protested that the mine was polluting the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers, which communities in the world depend on for his or her every day water supply.
In a message addressed to López after his death, Bishop Jenry Ruiz of the Diocese of Trujillo wrote, “You told me that you just weren’t an environmentalist because for you, the social, ecological and political commitment weren’t an ideological query, but a matter of your being of Christ and of the church.”
The bishop noted the activist’s understanding of Pope Francis’ environmental teaching and “tenderness and truth” in responding to his detractors. Ruiz wrote too that López knew of the risks. “You knew thoroughly that the extractivist and mining system is a system that kills and destroys the entire world, together with the corruption of the false politicians and the narco-governments.”
In a video posted by several Honduran news outlets, the Rev. Carlos Orellana, a Catholic priest in Tocoa, called the killing of López “a death foretold” and accused Tocoa Mayor Adán Fúnez and his “minions” of being chargeable for the hit that killed López.
Fúnez told Honduran outlet HRN that he was praying that the reality can be revealed, that his family was in fear attributable to the accusations and that he had been attacked with stones.
The Honduran Jesuits released an announcement also holding the federal government chargeable for López’s death, pointing to officials’ failure to maintain mine owners in check and investigate threats against López’s group and punish those chargeable for them.
“We demand that the investigation to find out the reality of the facts be carried out with the effective accompaniment of a global commission that guarantees impartiality, diligence and independence to find out the fabric and mental responsibilities within the murder of our comrade and brother Juan Antonio López,” the order wrote.
López’s death is the newest in quite a few killings in a rustic known to be particularly deadly for environmental activists. The 2016 murder of Indigenous environmental activist Berta Cáceres drew international attention, but many deaths occur with far less international scrutiny.
Earlier this yr, the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed alarm on the high rates of assassinations and other violence against environmental and land defenders in Honduras, saying that 17 defenders were assassinated in 2022 and one other eight were killed violently in the primary 4 months of 2023.
Outside Honduras, Catholic organizations, including Caritas Canada and the Jesuit European Social Centre, expressed grief at López’s death.
The Latin American bishops’ conference, known by the acronym CELAM, wrote to López’s colleagues and family, emphasizing López’s service as a frontrunner of ecclesial base communities, a pastoral employee, diocesan coordinator and member of the Ecclesial Network of Mesoamerican Ecology (REMAM).
“We emphatically repudiate and condemn all types of violence, and regrettably the assassination of Juan is a mirrored image of a small portion of society that’s intolerant, unjust and who wish to impose their will through force,” the conference wrote.
In the U.S., the Sisters of Mercy’s justice team has long argued that extractivist development, violence and corruption in Honduras are amongst the basis causes driving migration to the U.S., asserting that Hondurans must have “the suitable to not migrate.”
The U.S. religious congregation Sisters of Mercy has supported the Guapinol River activists, particularly over the virtually three-year period that eight activists, who didn’t include López, were imprisoned after organizing an encampment to dam the local mining company from accessing their roads.
During the protests, which began peacefully, military police killed one civilian and injured eight others. Ultimately, the Honduras Supreme Court ruled that the judge who ordered the lads’s detention lacked jurisdiction to achieve this and threw out the case.
Sister Mary Kay Dobrovolny, of the Sisters of Mercy, said that López had called for Fúnez, the mayor, to resign due to his links to drug traffickers just days before he was killed. Dobrovolny wrote in an announcement, “Too many individuals have died striving to guard the land that they love.”
The sister also said that, while visiting Honduras with a solidarity delegation organized by the Share Foundation in 2021, she witnessed the assassination of a person in front of his wife and kids. “The wailing of intense grief and shock of his family is a sound that I’ll always remember,” she wrote.
“I join my voice with the family members of Juan Lopez and all environmental activists who say the killing must end,” Dobrovolny, the congregation’s recent membership ministry coordinator, wrote.
As he got here to the conclusion of his letter to López, Ruiz, his bishop, wrote, “Dear Juan López, may your blood make the seeds of Kingdom bloom and now we have fruits of justice, where a recent Honduras is feasible.”
© Religion News Service
