The Spanish catholics (press cutting)

              To M The National Council of Labour 
Transport House Smith Sq. S.W.1.
The following appeared in the 
MANCHESTER GUARDIAN of 30th Nov. 1936
The Spanish Catholics
Nothing more clearly shows the failure of the Spanish rebel General Franco to obtain popular support than the fact that, although he claims to fight for Christianity (with Mohammedan aid), Spanish Roman Catholics today are extremely divided in their political allegiance. The National Council of Labour has done a useful service in publishing a pamphlet reminding us that many sincere and important Spanish Catholics have remained loyal to the lawful Government in its struggle against the rebels. The pamphlet (which is called "Catholics and the Civil War in Spain," price 1d.) opens with a letter from a Spanish lecturer at Oxford University in which he points out that in the Basque provinces the Catholic population as well as the priests are solidly in unity with the Government. According to a statement by Señor Irujo, a Basque Catholic and a member of the present Spanish Cabinet, the Bishops of Vittoria and Pamplona (in the rebel area) "are virtually prisoners because "they would not say Masses for the "troops" and refused to be bishops of the "Right or Left." Father Julian Garcia Morales is reported as broadcasting an appeal from Madrid on September 14 to the Pope asking him to "condemn those military chiefs and "clergy who have taken up arms against "a legally constituted Government." Don José Bargamin, editor of a well-known Spanish Catholic review, strongly condemned on September 20 the rising by "a mob of desperate traitors," and Don Ossorio de y Gallardo, a distinguished Catholic lawyer, has protested that to exploit the name of God in order to attack a legally constituted State is to repudiate the command "to give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."