This article examines the silencing and repression of rebellious priests in Mexico from the 1940s to the mid 1970s and places the divergent actors that composed the Catholic Church during this period as key players in the Cold War. It examines the web of personal and organizational connections of a single emblematic individual whose transnational history has been mostly absent from the accounts of the era: the Jesuit priest Rodolfo Escamilla García. Founder of the Catholic Workers’ Youth (JOC) in the late 1950s, he championed the radical “See, Judge, Act” method that politicized thousands of people across Latin America during the 1960s, when liberation theology emerged throughout the continent and competing conservative authorities came together to repress it. In 1977 Escamilla García was brutally killed in Mexico City, likely with the approval of government security agencies. Yet, his brutal killing, and the murders and torture of other priests examined in this article, were never investigated by police authorities. Further, their silencing points to a moment in Mexican history when government leaders and iconic leftist intellectuals erroneously championed the idea that the nation was exceptional in the Latin American region, meaning less authoritarian and more democratic. The most influential ecclesiastical authorities overwhelmingly agreed. For them, maintaining a productive relationship with the state took precedence over the need to publicly condemn the assassination of rebellious priests. Instead, the loudest voices of condemnation came from progressive Catholics representing the Mexican Social Secretariat (SSM) and the National Center of Social Communications (CENCOS).