73 years after this bloody and brutal conflict came to a close there are still embers glowing in the ashes. Communism and Socialism may have received a setback at the fall of the Berlin Wall but they have not gone away.
Accounts as to the number or priests and nuns murdered out of hand vary from 6,000 to 16,000*
Either figure is a tragedy.
What always surprises me about this war, is the way that the British establishment always takes side of the Republicans, the reds.
The classification of Fascists bad and Communists good just does not hold true in this instance (although both sides are guilty of acts of great cruelty). Franco and his followers were protectors of the Faith and the Republican movement, so beloved of the literati of the world were their sworn enemies.
The Catholic Herald reports an incident last week in which a Spanish Catholic school was stormed by a mob baying for the blood of priests: "Where are the the priests?" they cried, "We're going to burn them at the stake".
This was not Islamabad, Kabul or Abuja, this was smart and fashion conscious cosmopolitan Madrid.
The mob of youths went rampaging through the school yelling that they wanted to destroy any crucifixes they came across; one teacher was injured in the melee.
Needless to say, if it had been a Muslim madrasa and not a Catholic school that had been attacked, the world would be reverberating with the news.
* The figures according to Wikipedia:
The figures of this persecution are impressive (not quite the right word, I feel):
13 bishops, 4,154 priests and seminarians, 2,365 religious, 283 nuns and about 4,000 laymen killed for helping or hiding nuns or priests.
Accounts as to the number or priests and nuns murdered out of hand vary from 6,000 to 16,000*
Either figure is a tragedy.
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| A Dominican martyr of the Spanish Civil War Picture: The Black Cordelias |
The classification of Fascists bad and Communists good just does not hold true in this instance (although both sides are guilty of acts of great cruelty). Franco and his followers were protectors of the Faith and the Republican movement, so beloved of the literati of the world were their sworn enemies.
The Catholic Herald reports an incident last week in which a Spanish Catholic school was stormed by a mob baying for the blood of priests: "Where are the the priests?" they cried, "We're going to burn them at the stake".
This was not Islamabad, Kabul or Abuja, this was smart and fashion conscious cosmopolitan Madrid.
The mob of youths went rampaging through the school yelling that they wanted to destroy any crucifixes they came across; one teacher was injured in the melee.
Needless to say, if it had been a Muslim madrasa and not a Catholic school that had been attacked, the world would be reverberating with the news.
* The figures according to Wikipedia:
The figures of this persecution are impressive (not quite the right word, I feel):
13 bishops, 4,154 priests and seminarians, 2,365 religious, 283 nuns and about 4,000 laymen killed for helping or hiding nuns or priests.
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