498 Spanish priests, nuns beatified / Protesters complain church is taking sides in politics

Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
Monday, October 29, 2007

Bitter memories of Spain's civil war were on center stage Sunday, as the Vatican put 498 slain Spanish priests and nuns from that divisive era on the path to sainthood.

The Mass recognizing the Catholic men and women killed around the time of the 1936-39 civil war was the largest beatification ceremony in church history. Thousands of pilgrims who traveled from Spain filled St. Peter's Square, waving yellow-and-red national flags and pictures of the newly beatified, whom the church considers to be martyrs.

"For a Catholic Spain, they died," read one huge banner.
However, the beatifications have stirred controversy in Spain, where critics accuse the Vatican of playing politics.The timing of the ceremony, and the fact it was held at the Vatican with an appearance by Pope Benedict XVI, was seen by many as an ideologically motivated gesture of support for a Catholic church at loggerheads with the leftist Spanish government.

The church says the priests and nuns, as well as a handful of lay religious people, were killed decades ago by leftist forces because of their Catholicism - "heroic witnesses of the faith," as the pope called them Sunday.

Many in Spain's Catholic Church sided with the Fascists led by Gen. Francisco Franco, who overthrew the elected leftist government, eventually won the war and ruled as a dictator for nearly 40 years, granting wide power and influence to the church. Spain remains deeply polarized, and the nation is struggling to come to terms with its past.

This week, a hard-fought "historical memory" law goes before the Spanish parliament, which acknowledges in the most comprehensive form to date the atrocities of the Franco regime, while also giving a nod to those killed for their religious beliefs. It will finance exhumation of Franco-era mass graves, pay reparations to his victims and cancel summary court judgments against opponents of the regime.

The Vatican insisted Sunday's ceremony was not political.

"To beatify a martyr, or a group of martyrs, has no political meaning, but only exclusively a religious one," Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, a member of the ultraconservative Opus Dei organization, which is especially dominant in Spain, told an Italian newspaper.

Later Sunday, protesters scuffled with Catholic adherents outside a church known for its association with Opus Dei. The protesters displayed a banner that, repeating graffiti that have popped up in Spain, said: "Those who have killed, tortured and exploited cannot be beatified."
They accompanied the banner with a replica of Picasso's famous Spanish War painting, "Guernica." The churchgoers tore up the banner that portrays the horrors of war as the two groups brawled, Italian television reported.

Benedict, unlike his predecessor, John Paul II, rarely presides over beatifications, so his choice to appear Sunday was significant. As Mass concluded, he stepped onto his balcony above St. Peter's Square to bless the audience and salute the beatified and their followers.