Village life in Andalucia

In spite of the resignation of the fascist pope Joseph Ratzinger, the Catholic Church continues to press its Nazi credentials on Spain

At a scurrilous “religious” service held in Tarragona and attended by Spanish Cabinet members as well as Catalan premier Artur Mas, the Vatican on Sunday officially beatified 522 Catholic officials killed during the Spanish Civil War. This disgraceful act re enforces the feeling of many in our rural community that the Catholic church remains an institution sympathetic to the fascism of the Franco era.

The total lack of a “truth and reconciliation” process in Spain is nowhere more evident than in its failure to call the Catholic Church to account for its criminal and immoral activity before during and after the civil war.

You will not find a single picture, photograph or icon of the pope or the Vatican in any shop or institution in the region of the Axarquia.

The men of the villages rarely receive the host at communion, preferring to stand at the back of the church to see the host consecrated before retreating to the bar. The women of the villages care for the village saints, those local Gods who are supposed to have actually done something for the communities who worship them.

While he praised these so called “martyrs” as “disciples,” pope Francis avoided mentioning the Catholic Church’s role defending and supporting Nazism during the 1936-39 Civil War in which it aligned itself with anti democratic Nationalist forces and, later, with the fascist Franco regime — one of many indelible stains upon the Spanish Church’s history that still evokes hatred in many democratically minded Spaniards.

It is incredible that pope Francis – an apparently liberal pope – should stoop to such an act, which is unworthy of a Christian man. It is tempting to see the hand of the last pope Ratzi the Nazi, who still wafts around the corridors of the Vatican behind this event, which will surprise no one from the villages of the Axarquia.