Mexico ? A Roman Catholic priest was found shot to death in his car with his hands cuffed in the rough border city of Tijuana on Monday, in what police said appeared to be an organized-crime killing.

Tijuana Bishop Rafael Romo said “the Church has been wounded,” and called on city residents to unite against the drug and crime-fueled violence along Mexico’s border.

“We feel wounded by this violence … because we hear about it every day, and now it has hit us,” said Romo. “It is no longer time to wait and see which of us gets hit next, but rather to realize that we must unite in this battle against crime.”

Parish priest Luis Velasquez, 51, was found in his car, which had been left near a shopping mall parking lot.

He was assigned to a parish church in the Colinas de Agua Caliente neighborhood, which is where many drug gangs in Tijuana operate.

The method in which the killing was carried out suggests “at first sight” a murder by organized crime gangs, said Francisco Castro Trenti, homicide director for the Baja California state attorney general’s office.