Robles encouraged the relatives of the disappeared to keep alive the memory of the people whom “you are missing and we are missing.”
“We cannot settle for saying ‘disappeared,’ that is, ‘those people no longer appear on the map of humanity, they no longer count.’ … We need to keep alive the awareness that each of these faces in the photographs that you have brought are a loved, sought after, dear person, a person who is missing from the center of the family. An absent person,” the cardinal said during his homily.
The prelate emphasized that the problem of forced disappearance is a “human tragedy” that must resound in the minds and hearts of the authorities at the national level who are responsible for searching for missing persons and for guaranteeing the right to protection and security.
“We cannot allow the tragedy that involves so many families to be shielded by a number that is manipulated by some with political and election criteria. ‘Ah, for us to do well in the next elections, the number must be lowered, it must be said that they are fewer.’ We can’t allow that,” Robles stressed.
He also encouraged those attending the Mass to continue demanding justice from the authorities: “We want to know: What happened? Where are they? Are they alive or dead? If they’re alive, where are they? If they’re dead, where are they? We want to know, we have the right to know.”
Before the Mass, the families held a procession through the streets of Jalisco with the relics of St. Cristóbal Magallanes and fellow martyrs who died during the persecution of the Mexican Church in the 1920s that led to the Cristero uprising, which had major support in Jalisco state.