Priest arrested in Mexico on charges of sexual abuse of a girl

The priest associated to the Catholic diocese of Veracruz is currently in custody in a jail waiting for the process on sexual abuse of an underage minor.

As of Monday, the diocese of the Port of Veracruz had not issued a statement regarding Fernández Montalvo’s arrest on charges of sexual abuse.

By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez

Late on Sunday, local news services in the State of Veracruz, eastern Mexico, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, issued warnings about the arrest of a priest then identified only as Mario, per the strict laws dealing with accusations on sexual predators in Mexico.

However, by mid Monday many local web services in the City and Port of Veracruz and other cities in that state had already identified the priest as Mario Fernández Montalvo. At 61, he used to be up until mid-2024 the pastor of the parish of the Transfiguration in Tierra Blanca, a small city 50 miles (80 kilometers) Southwest of the Port of Veracruz, and 190 miles (310 kilometers) Southeast of Mexico City.

More recently, he used to be the pastor of The Divine Savior parish, one of the six parishes or equivalents in the Tierra Blanca municipality of Veracruz, part of the Deanery of Guadalupe, in the diocese of Veracruz, as was possible to read in this URL.

This diocese is one of very few Catholic religious districts in Mexico with a functional website offering information about their priests, so Fernández Montalvo still appeared on Monday afternoon as pastor of the Divine Pastor, in the town of Huixcolotla, in the same municipality, but 18 miles or 28 kilometers North of Tierra Blanca’s main square.

Nested in the Eastern coast of central Mexico, Tierra Blanca is known for its produce, mostly rice and sugar cane, with a portion of its population raising cattle, hens, pork, and other agricultural products.

Religiously it depends on the diocese of Veracruz, and its territory is shared by six parishes, serving little less than 144 thousand inhabitants. Despite the relatively low human population, there is a need for that many parishes, as the population is scattered in more than 500 small communities, many of them isolated in the lowlands of the Mexican gulf coast.

Fernández Montalvo used to be the center of attention in local media. Little more than a year ago, bishop Carlos Briseño Arch, an Augustin Recollect, an order close but not quite the same as Pope Leo XIV’s, made some changes in the parishes in his diocese, and there were public mobilizations demanding the bishop to keep Fernández Montalvo in his position.

Although the diocese’s website is updated on some issues, whoever goes there and reads their news or sees their pictures would assume Pope Francis is still alive as there are no news of his death, the Conclave, or Pope Leo XIV’s election.

In that respect, neither the diocese's website nor the Facebook profile page have any reaction to Fernández Montalvo’s arrest late on Sunday.

They posted, oddly enough, a video (available here) about a celebration at the parish where Fernández Montalvo used to be pastor, that of the Transfiguration of the Lord. There is an active comments section there, with persons asking the diocese and bishop Briseño Arch to set the record straight regarding Fernández Montalvo’s arrest.

That is more relevant since that profile page published an excerpt of a statement from the priest who is the spokesman of the diocese, where he goes over a crime shocking Mexico these days, where a toddler was killed by some criminal group who was unable to get money from a mother defaulted on paying an informal loan. That video is available with audio only in Spanish here.

The same page also reposted a video from Vatican News about Pope Leo XIV’s message during Sunday’s Angelus.

It is noteworthy that Fernández Montalvo used to have a rather active personal Facebook profile (available here). Many of the most recent postings in that profile were deleted recently. It is unclear if it was part of the trouble created by bishop Briseño Arch’s decision to appoint Fernández Montalvo to a different position, or if it is somehow related to the reasons behind his arrest.

As far as it has been possible to know, the reason behind Fernández Montalvo’s arrest is the sexual abuse of an underage female in the municipality of Tierra Blanca, where both his current and his former parishes are located.

However, as it happened with his Facebook profile, where many postings appear now as “unavailable” he had left Tierra Blanca. His arrest actually happened in the city of Córdoba, 50 miles or 80 kilometers North of what used to be his hometown.

Once arrested, he was sent into a local jail to wait for the arraignment and other judiciary proceedings common in these cases in Mexico.

Up until Monday afternoon there was no official statement about the arrest of Fernández Montalvo at the State Attorney’s office’s website (content available only in Spanish).

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