Some in Spain question the beatification's timing - three days before Parliament is to pass a Socialist-sponsored law seeking to make symbolic amends to victims of the war and the Franco dictatorship. The Catholic Church says there is no official death figure, but estimates nearly 7,000 clergy were killed in Spain from 1931 to 1939.Įxcept for seven lay people, all of those being beatified Sunday were clergy - priests, deacons, seminarians, monks and nuns, ranging in age from 16 to 78. The violence was one of Franco's pretexts for launching his rebellion, and it intensified after the war started, with churches in government-held areas burned and more and more clergy attacked. Leftist forces targeted the church as an institution they saw as a symbol of wealth, repression and inequality. Violence against the clergy had been simmering since 1931, when a republic was declared in Spain. Francisco Franco, who went on to win and preside over a nearly 40-year dictatorship that was staunchly supported by the Catholic Church. The 1936-39 war pitted an elected, leftist government against right-wing forces that rose up under Gen. He will be beatified along with 497 other people the Catholic Church has declared victims of religious persecution just before or during the Spanish civil war. "May God forgive you, as I forgive and bless you," he said, according to a book published by the Spanish Bishops Conference. Two weeks later, the bishop blessed his killers as they took aim and opened fire. Laplana y Laguna declined - he would not shed his vestments. The mayor of this town in central Spain offered to free him with a ruse: send police into the seminary where he was being held, have the bishop dress as a cop and sneak out. The ceremony - the largest mass beatification in Vatican history - comes as Spain is taking a closer look at its painful past.īishop Cruz Laplana y Laguna was taken prisoner by leftist militiamen two days after the war broke out on July 17, 1936. The bishop and 497 other people will be beatified Sunday by the Catholic Church, the last step before possible sainthood. In the end, they showed pity and shot him - one of hundreds of executions of Roman Catholic clergy as civil war erupted in Spain. *beatify = to declare a deceased person to be among the blessed and thus entitled to specific religious honor the first step towards canonizationīy DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writerįirst the militia fighters thought of hacking the bishop to death with an ax.
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