Man shot dead before Mass inside of church in Colombia

SÃO PAULO, Brazil – An unknown woman got into a Church in Cali as the attendees prepared to pray the rosary before Mass and shot a man dead on July 15.

The attack also injured another churchgoer, a woman who was near the fatal victim and was hit by a bullet in the leg.

About 200 parishioners were gathered at Saint John Paul II Church, located in the southern part of Cali, Colombia, on Monday afternoon, waiting to pray the rosary. According to Father Oscar de la Vega, the vicar, at least 1,500 people usually take part in the prayer, which is regularly live streamed on social media.

A video of the incident shows that a nun was at the altar making an introductory speech as the attendees arrived to pray when a number of shots were heard. The nun lies on the floor, and cries are heard coming from the pews.

CCTV footage obtained by the police showed that the attacker was sitting on a pew at the back of the temple before standing up and shooting at the victim. A man was waiting for her on a motorcycle outside of the church, and she left immediately after perpetrating the crime.

The victim was identified as 50-year-old Erasmo Trujillo, described by de la Vega as “an active member of the community” who used to attend Mass every week with his wife, children, and grandchildren.

According to Col. Carlos Oviedo, the chief of police in Cali, Trujillo had been arrested in 2016 for being allegedly involved with drug trafficking and conspiracy to commit a crime. In an interview to local Blu Radio, Oviedo said Trujillo was supposedly a member of a gang known as Los Maleteros, which operated at the Cali airport. The police couldn’t discover till now if he had been facing threats lately.

Trujillo died on the scene. The other victim wasn’t seriously injured. She was taken to a nearby clinic and received medical attention.

The church has remained closed since the incident that shocked the whole community. On July 19, a Mass of reparation will be celebrated by de la Vega.

“That was an aggression not only on the victims, but also on religious freedom and on the church’s sacredness. As members of civil society, we must protect the public places, especially the religious ones,” de la Vega told Crux.

In his opinion, it’s important that the attackers understand that they committed a very serious crime when they killed a person inside of a church.

“The idea of sanctuary, of a special protection against any power in society conferred to a person who is inside of a church, is a very ancient concept. It’s remarkably serious to attack such a concept,” he added.

De la Vega said the authorities were wrong to reveal that Trujillo had been detained in 2016 and “stigmatized” him.

“It was apparently a situation that happened years ago, but he had never been convicted of any crime. They stigmatized him without giving more information on the subject, thus reducing the impact of the crime,” he said.

The priest said that he has been accompanying Trujillo’s family and trying to give them strength in order to deal with such a painful moment and with the stigmatization suffered by the victim.

On social media, messages of solidarity coming from several parts of Latin America have been sent to de la Vega. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, he has been streaming celebrations and prayers every day, and Spanish-speaking Catholics from many countries became frequent spectators.

Saint John Paul II Church has been undergoing a great renovation since last year in order to become a cathedral for the southern zone of Cali.

“Parishioners are donating and taking an active part in the process. Everybody has a sense of belonging. In a moment like that, the crime provoked even more shock among the people,” de la Vega said.

The third most populated city in Colombia, Cali has suffered for decades with the violence of drug cartels and of the left-wing guerrilla groups that have been active since the 1960s in the South American country.

Over the past few months, despite the ongoing peace negotiations between the government and guerrilla organizations, insurgent branches have been promoting acts of terror in rural areas of Valle del Cauca, where Cali is located.

The causes of violence in a giant city like Cali are manifold, De la Vega said, and the continuous urban growth makes it impossible to prevent individual acts of violence.

Sadly, that has not been the first time that the priest saw something like that occurring inside of a church. Twenty-two years ago, after celebrating a collective wedding with more than 100 couples side by side with then Archbishop Isaías Duarte, he was there when two armed men approached Duarte and shot him dead.

John Paul II expressed his condolences for Duarte’s killing and called Colombians to seek a path of peace and repudiate violence. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), now demobilized, was accused of involvement in his death, but the case has never been totally solved.

“A church is a place of reconciliation and reconstruction. Something like that can never happen inside of a church,” de la Vega said.