Another priest was violently murdered inside a church in Mexico on April 20 just as police were still investigating the killing of another priest two days earlier.

Two unidentified men gunned down Fr. Juan Miguel Contreras Garcia, 33, at the Saint Pio of Pietrelcina Church in Guadalajara on Friday afternoon. Two days prior, a group also attacked and stabbed 50-year-old Fr. Rubén Alcántara Díaz before the 7 p.m. mass at Cuautitlán's Our Lady of Carmen Parish. 

Their deaths bring the total of murdered priests in Mexico to 23 since 2012, according to reports. The Mexican Bishops Conference immediately issued a statement to decry the acts of violence and call for a "culture of peace and reconciliation."

"It's time to look honestly at our culture and society in order to ask ourselves how we lost respect for life and the sacred," the statement read. "We ask the Catholic faithful to accompany their priests with prayer, above all, in the pastoral service of the communities they are entrusted to."

Mexico's Catholic population stands at 81 percent but for the last six years, violence against priests has escalated. Rev. Sergio Omar Sotelo Aguilar of the Catholic Multimedia Center, which has launched public investigations to the killings, told reporters that there was a rising trend towards persecution in Mexico.

The priest expressed concerns over corruption and the ineffictiveness of those in authority to stop the violence.

Professor Jorge Eugenio Hernandez Trasloheros told Christian Today in 2016 that priests are usually regarded as leaders in Mexican communities.

"It is not strange that they are a target of the gangs," the professor said. "The criminals want people isolated and full of fear," he added.