In the 1980s and 1990s, Pope John Paul II also beatified hundreds of Spanish Civil War martyrs, one included was a blind 83-year-old Sister of Charity, Rita Josepha Pojalte Sanchez, who was dragged downstairs, driven to the edge of town, and shot, an old lady who'd done nothing to hurt anybody.
The Church's decision to beatify these undoubted martyrs however, has been highly controversial, especially given the Spanish Church's early support for the brutally repressive dictatorship of General Franco.
One of Britain's leading historians of the Spanish Civil War is Paul Preston. He's Professor of Contemporary Spanish Studies at the London School of Economics, and I asked him to explain the causes of the outbreak of anti-clerical violence in 1936.
Paul Preston: Well there's a short-term cause and a long-term cause. The short-term cause was that there was a military coup, and as a result of that military coup, all of the structures of law and order collapsed, and that therefore permitted, if you like, the long-term causes to come into operation. Basically the long-term cause was the previous 100 years the Church had been seen by the bulk of the poor in Spain as the institution which justified the exploitation of the poor by the rich, and that's putting it very, very crudely, but that is basically the case. And of course since from the very beginning of the military coup the Church legitimised and justified the violence of the military, in the areas not controlled by the military, the Church, or members of the Church, were regarded as the allies of the enemy, of the military, and therefore they became targets for the rage of anarchists, also criminal elements of course, who just simply wanted to steal the wealth of the Church.
Stephen Crittenden: Anthony Beevor in his book about the Spanish Civil War says that for the anarchists at least, the Church represented nothing less than the psychological operations branch of the State, and as such it was a target which ranked in importance with the Civil Guard.
Paul Preston: I think that's a good phrase. I think that does to an extent, sum it up. And it's interesting that the Pope is today technically making martyrs, giving people the title of martyrs, but of course it was the Catholic Church by its association with the repression and the exploitation of an incredibly unjust and repressive society, which effectively made martyrs by putting priests in the front line of that ongoing repression, if you like. And I think the key thing that we have to remember is that what starts on the 18th July 1936 is triggered off by the military coup and by the fact that from day 1, and even before there were any assaults on priests, that the Church is justifying and legitimising the military coup. The violence against individual clergy cannot be justified under any circumstances, but to a certain extent one could say that the Catholic Church brought it upon itself.
Stephen Crittenden: Was it spontaneous or was it organised? Was it centralised or was it local?
Paul Preston: It was entirely spontaneous and entirely local. What makes this possible is the military coup and the immediate and consequent collapse of the structures of law and order, and what remained of a republican State. But one of its first priorities along with of course, trying to defend itself, was the effort to re-establish law and order. And it's fair to say that all of the violence. 99% of the violence against Catholic personnel takes place within the first two-and-a-half to three months of the war, that thereafter there is very, very little.
Stephen Crittenden: Is it true that leaders on all sides, leaders of all parties, leaders on the left, tried to prevent the violence? Is that true?
Paul Preston: I'm not sure one could say that all leaders of all parties, but it is absolutely the case that the middle class Republican parties, they of course were fiercely against this violence. But the Socialists also made a very major effort. I mean the Socialists didn't come into the government until the 4th September, 1936. But throughout, the Socialists tried to protect the Church, and indeed from the spring of 1937, under the government of Juan Negrin, the great war leader of the republic, efforts were made to permit the celebration of mass, albeit very discreetly. Even the Communists were against it. What was going on their minds is another issue, but they certainly thought it was very damaging to the republic and therefore were against any kind of spontaneous violence.
Stephen Crittenden: So who were the perpetrators then?
Paul Preston: Broadly speaking it was the anarchists, it was criminal elements and I think the point I made earlier, that often the attacks on religious personnel came as a result of the - I mean to give examples, when survivors of the atrocities committed by Franco's so-called African columns, refugees from the south, when they reached Madrid, there were acts of anti-clerical violence, and very often there were acts of anti-clerical violence in response to bombing raids.
Stephen Crittenden: Now we often assume that Spain in this period was a very religious society, but I've read that in the large cities in the 1930s, especially in Barcelona, the people had become de-Christianised in the same way that the Church talks about European society being de-Christianised today. In fact that there had been real neglect by the Church, which had failed to build new Church buildings in the outer industrial suburbs and so on. That in some of these places we had a working class that was quite secularised.
Paul Preston: Oh indeed, I would go further than that. You need to know that in the course of the republic, in 1932 the Catholic Church organised a huge survey about patterns of religiosity, attendance at mass and so on. And came up with what to the Church were deeply alarming results, that in many of the southern provinces, attendance at mass was lower than 2% of the population. Indeed very often those percentages were made up by women. There's also a gender difference between people who did and didn't go to mass. So there was a massive level of disbelief if you like.
Stephen Crittenden: Can we jump from the big cities then to an area like the Basque provinces where I understand the clergy had a very different attitude towards the working class. The working class was much less violent towards the clergy, and indeed when Franco came to power, the Nationalists killed a number of priests.
Paul Preston: Well of course there are many areas of Spain, particularly the centre and the north, where there is a very different relationship between the peasantry and the clergy. And that, to put it simply, is to do with the fact that you're talking about areas, certainly in Castile where they're relatively poor, where you've got, if you like, owner-occupiers, who hoe their land either because they own it, because they rent it, because they sharecrop it, but they think of themselves as men of substance and therefore do not regard the Church as an institution which is justifying injustice.
And in the case of the Basque country and some of the other provinces of the northern coast which are lush, fertile, dairy farming areas, where you've actually got a relatively prosperous peasantry, the position of the clergy within relatively prosperous villages, yes there's a much greater equality. And of course it's interesting that there are in the course of the Civil War, there are clergy who are executed by the Francoists, effectively because they do preach a Christian message. I could tell you, if you can bear this, there was an incredibly interesting story about a Jesuit priest called Father Huidobro, and this Father Huidobro was a chaplain to Franco's legion. And he was killed during the attack on Madrid, and the Jesuits put him up for beatification and possible canonisation. And the whole process went forward. This priest was renowned as a dedicated Christian, and finally in the course of the very detailed investigation that takes place during the canonisation process, it was discovered that he hadn't actually been killed by a Russian bullet, as had at first been thought, but he had actually been shot in the back by one of his own men fed up with the fact that he was constantly preaching against the rape, looting and pillage being carried out by the Foreign Legionnaires. And the canonisation process was dropped. I think this happened in the 1960s, and what is interesting though is that the Basque priests who were killed by Franco, have not been recognised by the Church. I mean this is why it's become such a big issue in Spain today, that the whole thing is so utterly partisan.
Stephen Crittenden: Now tell us about the violence on the other side, on the Franco side, the reprisals. Because I understand you're working on a book on this very subject?
Paul Preston: I think reprisals is the wrong word, because obviously reprisals suggest something that happens in response to something else, and it simply was not like that. Basically, the military conspirators we have the instructions that were issued to the conspirators in 80 of Spain's 50 provinces, in which it was stated categorically that mass terror needed to be used in order to paralyse the enemy, to punish the enemy. And to use the words of the man who directed the conspiracy, General Mola, he said 'We need to eliminate those who do not think as we do.'
So there was already a plan of extermination, and effectively what happened was that in each area the Francoists took over, a massive extermination began. And this was carried out not so much by the army, but for instance in the case of the south, when the capital city of a province was taken over, there would then be columns formed, which were a mixture of local landlords, big landowners, their employees, their sons, mixed in with - because all of those would immediately declare themselves to be Falangists, even though they might not have been members of the Falange, five minutes earlier, mixed in with a number of Civil Guards, maybe an army officer or two, and these mixed columns would then go to villages where they would, on the say-so of the local priest or the local landlord, obviously the priest had not been killed, then begin a systematic extermination of all of those who had ever served on the left, had been town councillors, were members of left-wing political parties, people who were thought to be members of trade unions and so on. And there was a mass extermination.
Stephen Crittenden: You mention there the say-so of maybe the local priest, I guess the important issue here for this program is what role overall the Church played in this period of repression?
Paul Preston: Well I think it's at two levels, I mean the hierarchy in its statements is justifying the repression and using the rhetoric of a crusade against godlessness. Obviously it is very difficult to generalise. There are priests who willingly participate in the repression, indeed taking up weapons. For instance in the province of Navarre which is considered the most intensely Catholic of Spain's provinces, for a brief time there was actually a shortage of priests to say mass, because a lot of priests have actually gone with the military to the front, in order to kill Reds, and they have to be called back in order to fulfil their duties. But equally we know of cases where the priest tried to save people.
Stephen Crittenden: A last question. You mentioned just then the Church's use of the rhetoric of a crusade against godlessness once Franco had come to power. It's very interesting to think of this whole issue in terms of the manipulation of historical memory, the politics of historical memory, arguably the Church in some senses is still using the rhetoric of a crusade against godlessness in early 21st century secularist Spain.
Paul Preston: Well I think that's right. I also happen to think it's a terrible mistake in the first decade of the 21st century, particularly within Spain, a country that suffered both the terrible Civil War and then 38 years of a repressive dictatorship, which is trying to create consensus democracy. For the Church to be doing something that is so divisive is a big mistake because it directs a lot of negative criticism against the Church at a time when one would think that the Church would be better employed doing other things. In a sense what it's doing is merely pandering to a hard-core of extreme supporters and not, again I keep coming back to this, not in any sense pursuing its real Christian mission.
Stephen Crittenden: Professor Paul Preston, of the London School of Economics.
Paul Preston: Well timing is everything in these matters, and there's an interesting political aspect to this group beatification. This week in Spain, a new law of historical memory comes into force. The Vatican is no friend of the Socialist Zapatero government, which has previously introduced gay marriage in Spain, and the new law of historical memory, attempts to go back, reopen, and come to terms with the dark history of the Franco years in a way the Catholic Church may not be comfortable with. Here's Professor Judith Keene from Sydney University, to explain the background of the new law.
http://www.iww.org.au/node/10 "Would you have freedom from wage-slavery.." Joe Hill http://www.iww.org/en/join
Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address. www.yahoo7.com.au/y7mail