Catholic persecution in the Spanish Civil War The trouble had been brewing a long time, and in mid-July, it finally boiled over. Units of the army in Spanish Morocco rose up in rebellion. The Spanish Civil War had begun. Seventy-five years later, the bloody struggle that followed from 1936 to 1939 stands as one of the traumatic events of the 20th century. Historians see it as setting the stage for World War II. As many as a million people, civilians included, might have died in a conflict that pitted class against class, ideology against ideology, unbelief against faith and left a shattered nation. The Catholic Church was one of the main sufferers. Thousands of priests, religious and laypeople died for the faith in execution-style killings. British historian Michael Burleigh called the killing of clergy and religious “the worst example of anticlerical violence in modern history,” surpassing even the French Revolution for that dubious distinction. Of claims that the Church brought it on itself, Burleigh said, “Even then it was fashionable to blame the victims. Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and the communist Soviet Union each provided significant military aid — material and personnel — to the side it favored: Germany and Italy to the rebel Nationalists of the right, the Soviets to the communists who made up a major element of the Republican coalition on the left. Thousands of volunteers from other countries flocked to Spain to fight for one side or the other. Some 900 Americans died in the war. Timeline July 17, 1936 The Spanish Civil War begins with military uprising in Spanish Morocco. July 26, 1936 Adolf Hitler agrees to give military aid to Gen. Francisco Franco and the Nationalists. Oct. 1, 1936 Franco is named head of the Nationalist state and sets up a government in the city of Burgos. Nov. 8, 1936 The Battle for Madrid begins with a Nationalist attack on the capital. Nov. 25, 1936 American volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade sail from New York City to join the Republicans in fighting the Nationalists. Dec. 22, 1936 Volunteers from Italy arrive in Spain to fight for the Nationalists. Jan. 6, 1937 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt bans the export of arms to Spain. May 5, 1938 The Vatican recognizes Franco’s regime and forbids any Catholics from supporting the Republic. Nov. 19, 1938 Franco grants mining concessions to Germany in return for military aid. February 1939 Britain and France recognize Franco’s regime. March 28, 1939 Republican forces surrender Madrid to the Nationalists. April 1, 1939 Republicans surrender; Franco assumes power of all of Spain and continues his dictatorship until his death in 1975. Both during and since, much about the Spanish Civil War has been disputed, and that is no accident. “No episode in the 1930s has been more lied about than this one,” historian Paul Johnson wrote. Communist disinformation masterminded in Moscow found a willing audience in the “naivety, gullibility … and mendacity” of left-leaning Western intellectuals, Johnson added. Setting the stage Largely as a result, many important facts about the war remain unsettled. But the general outlines are clear. To understand what happened in those three awful years, it’s necessary to begin much earlier. By the 20th century, Spain’s golden age in the 16th century was a distant memory. The Spanish colonial empire had long since disappeared. For at least a century and a half the nation had been increasingly torn by social tensions marked by occasional outbreaks of violence. A crisis of immense proportions was taking shape, and no one seemed to be able to prevent it. Along with the rest of Spain, the Church suffered. During the 18th century, the anti-religious propaganda of the Enlightenment had worked to undermine its influence. In 1837, its extensive landholdings were seized at the insistence of liberals and were sold to middle-class speculators. In reaction, the Church grew increasingly conservative and identified more and more closely with the established social order. Yet even so, Hugh Thomas, author of “The Spanish Civil War” (Modern Library, $24.95), concluded that the Church was “charitable, evangelical [and] educational” — a benign, though old-fashioned, player in an increasingly troubled social scene. All the same, he wrote, by the early 20th century, bringing the Church down had become “a matter of obsession” for the Church’s enemies. Among these were liberal politicians, Freemasons (often, the same people as the liberal politicians), workers who blamed the clergy for their woes and secularized intellectuals with a chip on their shoulders against religion. A major aim of the Church’s opponents was to drive religious orders out of the field of education — a somewhat odd objective in a country that already had too few schools (in 1930, some 80,000 children weren’t in school in Madrid alone). Not uncommonly, however, hostility went beyond obsession and took a violent turn. In 1923, for instance, anarchists shot to death the archbishop of Saragossa. In spring 1931, a wave of violence broke out in Madrid, Seville and other cities, with mobs attacking churches, monasteries and convents. At this time, of course, the Church in Spain undoubtedly appeared to be overwhelmingly powerful — on paper. By the 1930s, women religious numbered some 60,000, diocesan priests, 35,000 and male religious, 20,000. There were about 1,000 monasteries and 4,000 convents. But the numbers are deceptive. Though nearly every Spaniard was baptized, two-thirds of them didn’t practice their religion, except possibly for baptisms, weddings and funerals. Only 5 percent of the rural inhabitants of New Castile made their Easter duty in 1931; in Andalusia, only 1 percent of the men in some villages went to Mass, and in a well-off Madrid suburb, 90 percent of Catholic school graduates didn’t go to church. Pivotal year The year 1931 was a turning point. Supporters of a republic won a majority of votes in local elections in April. King Alfonso XIII, a stabilizing presence in the country up to now, left Spain, and it was proclaimed a republic. The new provisional government almost at once declared separation of church and state and religious freedom. In the spring, a campaign of anti-monarchist, anti-religious violence began in Madrid, Seville and other cities. On April 20, Father Josemaría Escrivá, founder of the new Catholic group Opus Dei, recorded in his journal that for 24 hours the capital city was “one huge madhouse.” May 10 brought fresh attacks on churches and other religious establishments. Fearing for the safety of Blessed Sacrament in one chapel, Father Escrivá — who was canonized in 2002 — wrapped a ciborium of hosts in a cassock and newspaper and carried it to the home of a friend. The government was slow to respond to the outbreak, and that slowness left many of its opponents even more angry and suspicious than before. The situation was not improved when the cardinal-archbishop of Toledo and the bishop of Vitoria were expelled from the country for anti-Republican statements (which, in fact, they had made). Church’s Relationship with Spain On April 16, Pope Benedict XVI, in a formal audience, greeted the new Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, Maria Jesus Figa Lopez-Palop, the first woman to hold the post. As is customary on these occasions, he was exceedingly proper and polite. But he was also notably direct and to the point about some of the current strains in relations between the Catholic Church and Spain’s left-leaning secularist government. Decrying efforts to “marginalize” religion — “sometimes through denigration, derision, discrimination, and indifference” — Pope Benedict called this a violation of the right to religious freedom inherent in the dignity of human persons. And he added: “In her concern for all human beings, in all their dimensions, the Church keeps watch over their fundamental rights. … She watches over the right to human life from its beginning to its natural end. … She supervises protection and aid to the family. … The Church also supports an education that integrates moral and religious values, in accordance with the beliefs of the parents, as is their right and as befits the integral development of young people.” Pope Benedict will visit Madrid during the Aug. 16-21 World Youth Day. In the fall, the government introduced a draft constitution with religious clauses that Thomas called “ambitious but foolish.” They included ending government payments to priests begun in last century as compensation for seizure of Church lands; requiring religious orders to register with the justice ministry under threat of dissolution if found to be threats to the state; dissolving orders whose members take more than the usual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience (in other words, the Jesuits, some of whose senior members make a vow of loyalty to the pope); ending all religious education; requiring government approval for any “public manifestation of religion”; and recognizing only civil marriage as legal. Spanish reformers had long sought to bring the country into the 20th century. Now it was clear that for the people running the country, that meant suppressing the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XI protested these developments in anencyclical published in June 1933 titled, Dilectissima Nobis (“Extremely Dear to Us” — i.e., the Spanish nation). Denouncing the “anti- religious whims of the present legislators,” the pope declared: “We cannot fail to raise our voice against the laws lately approved … which constitute a new and graver offense not only to religion and the Church but also to those declared principles of civil liberty on which the new Spanish regime declares it bases itself.” Pope Pius likened what was happening in Spain to the persecution of the Church then under way at the hands of the anticlerical government in Mexico and the atheist rulers of the Soviet Union.