Raul Bocanegra - Sevilla - 03/04/2009 9:04
PUBLIC knees, the dictator Francisco Franco prayed briefly. The Bishop of Madrid, Leopoldo Eijo and Garay, had said in the church of the Salesians: "I've never incensed with much satisfaction as I now do with Your Excellency."
was the May 20, 1939, barely a month and a half after the end of the Civil War and the Caudillo, triumphant, gave to the Primate of Spain, Cardinal Isidro Goma, his sword as a symbol of "victory" over the Republic.
The same April 1 was published last part Francoist war, Pope Pius XII pointed out the both the dictator and sent a telegram: "We thank desired Catholic victory. We hope that this beloved country to take with renewed vigor their ancient Christian traditions. "To this the bishops were applied, which Franco did not have to ask for your membership. The Church hierarchy offered it gladly from the first minute of the coup of July 1936.
Enrique Pla and Deniel, which replaced the front of the Bishops of Goma after his death in 1940, considered the war a "crusade" and "necessary".
The Church lived with horror the arrival of the Republic. "We have already entered the vortex the storm, "wrote Cardinal Francesc Vidal Goma just the day after the proclamation of democracy, April 15, 1931. The hierarchy lost with the departure of King Alfonso XIII privileges and many understood that faced overt persecution. "In the cultural universe of the English clergy, Catholicism could only coexist happily with an authoritarian regime," says Julian Casanova, author of the essay Civil War Victims (Issues of today.)
The October 1934 revolution in Asturias, where 34 priests were killed, further radicalized positions. Minority voices were engulfed as the canon-Arboleya Maximilian, who then asked if "the atrocious revolutionary movement has no more explanation than the unhealthy socialist propaganda", adding: "Nobody thinks that there can be tremendous responsibilities por parte nuestra".
Imposible entendimiento
Durante la República, el anticlericalismo rara vez fue violento. Sin embargo, eso acabó el 18 de julio de 1936. En zonas en las que triunfó la revolución tras el fracaso del Golpe, en pocos meses fueron asesinados más de 6.800 miembros del clero. "La persecución malogró cualquier atisbo de entendimiento entre los católicos más moderados y la República", entiende Casanova. "O se estaba con o se estaba contra. Las pastorales de los obispos veían la guerra como un enfrentamiento entre el Bien y el Mal", sostiene el historiador Pablo Martín de Santa Olalla, autor de De la victoria al Concordato (Editorial Laertes).
"Separad lo católico of English and English will be mortally wounded "
The Church rejected any solution to the war that was not the surrender of the cells. In the pulpit, sermons of hate is declaimed. For Goma, the uprising was" providential. "His successor Plá y Deniel, head of the bishops until 1968, said shortly after the end of the war that the Republic "led Spain to its ruin." Cardinal Pedro Segura Sevilla proclaimed "the final victory," the ABC of 13 April 1939. There was no room for reconciliation and forgiveness. The pope, in a radio address in English, called Franco "guarantor of justice," according to the same newspaper on April 18, 1939.
"separating Catholic English and the English will be mortally wounded in its most real substance," said the dictator in 1949. The church and state became two sides of the same coin. "All measurements are cursed by the Church were repealed," says Casanova. The curia regained its privileges. Before the end of 1939 was restored state funding of religious and clergy. In 1941, the state was already financing the reconstruction of churches in 1950, exempted the clergy from paying taxes and do military service, and in 1953, the Concordat with the Holy See initialed the confessional state. Totalitarianism
divine
The Church could not ask for more: "A change that was not necessary but on the regime extended a blanket moral guard and a little flatter Franco" he recalls in his memoirs Ramon Serrano Suner, Minister until 1942. The hierarchy officially entered in the government and advisory bodies of the State. Spain was involved in the "divine totalitarianism." For Goma, God was where he belonged: in "the apex of everything."
"I have avenged, speak! Proclaimed as early as 1939 Georges Bernanos
" Nothing moved in the Church in the first 25 years of Franco's peace, "said Casanova. The symbiosis between nation and religion, National-called, contributed to the legitimacy of Franco, who came to hold in 1944 in an interview with United Press that his regime had nothing to do with fascism, because it did not include Catholicism as a basic principle. The Church, in short, took an active part in the crackdown.
political responsibility law of 1939, and persecuted all opponents of the regime, even those who have expressed "grave passivity" and turned into informers pastors. It was payback time. Some 200,000 people were affected by this rule, which took effect in 1966, but was repealed in 1945. "The Church itself just opened his mouth nor did he feel the weight of overwhelmingly on the officiating of retaliation, "he argues Fernando Garcia de Cortazar in the Church (Espasa-Calpe).
" Not all priests are paid to that game and there were even some who refused to exercise that police work, "says Casanova. However, the curia was by hate: "The collaboration of the Church in the process of repression was based on the hierarchy itself," says De Santa Olalla. In 1940, it imposed a requirement for parole: a review religion. "Before they did not come to church. Now we bring them trained, "reflected the critical canon Arboleya in 1944. There was a gun to blow Catholicization.
" I have avenged speak ye! "said Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, and in 1939, when the retaliation had only begun.
