A Mexican bishop known for his negotiations with drug traffickers was found alive on Monday days after going missing in the violence-plagued southern state of Guerrero, a religious organisation said.
Salvador Rangel, bishop emeritus of the diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, may have been the victim of a kidnapping, according to a judicial source. Rangel had been missing since Saturday.
The 78-year-old clergyman was found safe in a hospital in Cuernavaca, in the neighboring state of Morelos, said the Mexican Episcopal Conference, without providing further details.
Morelos state prosecutor Uriel Carmona said it could have been an “express kidnapping” of Rangel, adding on Melenio TV: “It seems he’s fine.”
Hours earlier the conference had expressed concern about Rangel’s disappearance in a press release.
The Mexican bishops had launched a “respectful but firm appeal” to his presumed kidnappers to “allow him to take the medication he needs for his well-being.”
In 2015, Rangel is known to have entered into dialogue with leaders of the criminal gangs that produce and traffic narcotics and marijuana in Guerrero state.
The bishop had asked the cartels to stop the killings and extortions, and to free their hostages.
“It was worth it. I was able to save many kidnapped people,” Rangel told AFP in 2022 when he handed over his religious duties to a successor.
“There were deaths every day, (bodies) cut into pieces, extortion. It stopped.”
The battle against narco violence is a key topic of the presidential campaign ahead of elections on June 2.
The left-wing party in power claims to be tackling the root causes of violence, such as poverty, while opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez has pledged a return to a tougher policy towards crime and delinquents.
Violence surged in 2006 when then-president Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels. Since then the country has recorded 450,000 murders, and some 100,000 missing persons.