The Marranos in Spain who have taken control of the Republican Government are behind the burning down of churches and monasteries there now, the “Reichspost”, the organ of the Austrian Catholics, alleges. The descendants of the Marranos are now members of the Republican Government, it says. They brought about the Revolution; they are the victors now. The crypto-Jews who we thought were dead are now trying again to dominate Spain as they did in the fifteenth century, when their activities made it necessary to establish the Inquisition to curb their power.
The Marranos, it goes on, have been plotting underground for nearly 500 years, laying their plans carefully and quietly. People thought that in all these centuries they had become assimilated, and merged with the rest of the population, but now it is clear that they retained all along their peculiar beliefs and characteristics, waiting for their opportunity. What is happening now in Spain, the paper concludes, is an object lesson for the entire Catholic world.
VATICAN OFFICIAL ORGAN BLAMES COMMUNISTS
The “Osservatore Romano”, the official organ of the Vatican, on the other hand, attributes (according to the “Times”) the anti-clerical excesses in Spain to the Communists. Their action, it says, is exactly similar to that already witnessed in Mexico, China, and Russia. The responsibility for these outrages should not therefore be imputed to the “chivalrous Spanish people” and does not reflect upon their honour as a nation. The excesses, however, do impose an urgent duty upon all Christian peoples – namely, “to oppose with firmness and at all costs that international banditry which, being without God, without law, and without humanity, claims through a programme of bestial barbarities to usher in a new era.
Mr. H. J. Greenwall, the special correspondent of the “Daily Express”, who is now in Madrid, telegraphs to his paper from Madrid that the trouble is due to Monarchist provocation, and although they have succeeded in creating trouble, he says, the reaction against the Monarchists, and more particularly against the Church, has become violent. Hundreds of priests voted Republican at the municipal elections, but the bulk of the Roman Catholic Church in Spain was and is monarchical, he continues.
The Primate of Spain, Cardinal Segura, Archbishop of Toledo, was a close friend and councillor of King Alfonso. The Primate’s recent pastoral letter was a support of the monarchy, and this fed the flame of the latent anti-clerical movement. The flames burnt out when reports were circulated that the Church was plotting for the return of the monarchy. Feeling ran high, and the cry, “Down with the Jesuits! Down with the Roman Catholic Church” was heard all over Spain. The Primate fled from Toledo and went into hiding, and this afternoon he travelled to the French frontier in a motor-car and passed over to safety by way of Hendaye. Priests and nuns are still fleeing from Spain in their hundreds, he writes.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.