On Sunday, August 23, 2026, at the parish of Cristo Rey in Minatitlán, Veracruz, family, colleagues, and the faithful gathered to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the death of attorney Arturo Segovia Flores. The Eucharist, presided over by Father Omar Castillo Rosaldo, was offered for the eternal rest of the man regarded as a notable figure in life, family, and Catholic communication.
He passed away on August 23, 2021, at the age of 51, due to COVID-19. He was born on December 15, 1969, in Paraíso, Tabasco, into a humble family. His mother, Martha Flores, raised him in the faith with the support of Father Modesto Juárez. Between the ages of seven and nine, Arturo, his sister Rosario, and his mother moved to Cosoleacaque, Veracruz, in search of better conditions that never fully materialized. Economic hardships and personal crises did not distance him from the Church or from prayer groups.
Segovia considered the seminary, both as a possible vocation and as an opportunity for study. He left before completing it and gradually distanced himself from the Church as an institution, though not from the faith. He entered politics with the drive of someone who wants to change things overnight and learned “the hard way.” Later, he devoted himself to teaching and educational administration alongside teacher Marcos López González, his mentor. He served as a professor, administrator, and director of institutions; at the Manuel C. Tello Normal School he met Delia Nancy Jaimes Jaimes, whom he married in 1999. Their first son, Eduardo, was born on April 28, 2000. He was followed by Edgar Gustavo and Eddy Alejandro. Being a husband and father, he said of himself in life, was a challenge because he had not had clear family role models. He was determined that his loved ones would not lack what he had suffered.
In 2006 he founded Consultores Edsegovi, a firm specializing in political, business, and social consulting. Earlier, he had participated in the campaign that, according to those close to him, led to the legal victory of Gerardo Buganza Salmerón (PAN) in the 2004 gubernatorial race in Veracruz, although the official result was later altered for political reasons.
He worked with mayors in southern Veracruz, with institutions in Cuba and the European Union, with PEMEX, and in roundtables in China. In 2013 and 2014 he signed energy and trade agreements, won an international award in Dublin for a water project, and provided services to Alejandro Zairick, who secured the most-voted local seat in Veracruz. He was kidnapped. That experience, according to his institutional biography, led him back to God and prompted him to decide that he would dedicate the rest of his life to the pro-life cause. “He had been granted extra time,” he interpreted, to put his experience at the service of a greater good.
This led him, in 2015, to co-found the Popular Initiative “SI VIDA” to reform Article 4 of the Constitution of Veracruz and protect life from conception to natural death. He collaborated with Homero Gutiérrez Melchor, Father José Manuel Suazo Reyes, and then-Archbishop Hipólito Reyes Larios. In 2016 the initiative was approved. Segovia and his allies presented it as a national precedent: a citizen-driven constitutional reform without direct partisan tutelage that inspired similar efforts in other states.
From 2017 to 2018 the focus expanded to “SI VIDA, SI FAMILIA” in the face of gender ideology. They allied with CitizenGO, with laypeople, and with sectors of the Church; they formed the Veracruz Council +Vida+Familia and succeeded in dismantling Volume 7 of the State Development Plan. In 2020, amid the pandemic, he launched the online “School for Marriages: The Joy of Love,” based on a 2016 model, and expanded it beyond Veracruz.
In that same year 2020, Canon Hugo Valdemar Romero, founder of the Catholic News Agency – ACN and former spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Mexico, transferred its direction to him. Valdemar had created ACN in 2019, after leaving the social communications office of the archdiocese, with the idea of continuing a lay media outlet that would report on the Church in Mexico and the world. The pandemic nearly extinguished the project.
The alliance with the group led by Segovia and laypeople experienced in defending life, family, and doctrine gave it a second wind. Segovia assumed the direction with an eye toward continental expansion: improving the website, producing original content, building alliances (TLV1 in Argentina, networks in Mexico and Canada), and moving beyond simple news reporting to become an instrument of formation and defense of the faith, religious freedom, family, and life.
Under his leadership, ACN held the Family-Life-Freedom Encounters with acTÚa Familia, published investigations against initiatives it considered attacks on life and family, and gave voice to laypeople, priests, and bishops. By early 2021 the agency was already positioning itself as a reference in Catholic communication. At the same time, Segovia returned to political consulting in the “Certified Candidate” project of Ciudadano Gobernante A.C. In Campeche he supported the constitutional reform that protected life from conception. He was named national president of that association and sought to expand +Vida+Familia. His pace was that of someone his collaborators called a “work machine”: long hours, multiple fronts, little regard for his own physical wear and tear.
He contracted COVID-19 weeks before his death, during Mexico’s third pandemic wave. Although at one point his condition seemed to improve, the aftereffects overcame him. Days earlier, the Bishop of Campeche, José Francisco González González, visited him, prayed with him, and administered the Anointing of the Sick. On August 24, 2021, the same prelate presided over the funeral Mass, broadcast by ACN. “I commended him greatly to God,” said González González. Father José Manuel Suazo Reyes, then spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Xalapa, described him as “a great leader deeply committed to the issues of life, family, and fundamental freedoms” and “a great strategist.” Pedro Mejías, coordinator of acTÚa Familia, mourned not only the leader but the friend with whom he had projects in sight, including the direction of ACN’s international content. He is survived by his wife Nancy and his sons; Eduardo later assumed the presidency of ACN and of +Vida+Familia Veracruz.
Thanks to his legacy, the Catholic News Agency continues to publish an editorial line centered on life, family, and ecclesial current events. Those who knew him remember the man who forged his politics through hard knocks. None of that erases the legacy of the layman who managed to advance various projects, such as the Catholic News Agency, turning it into a trench of pastoral communication.
Five years later, the Catholic News Agency remembers him with deep gratitude. His testimony leaves the imprint that characterized him and is the same as that of the Gospel. Undoubtedly, the best epitaph is the one he marked: An apostle of life.