Beatification of Spanish Civil War Victims (2007)

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The beatification of victims of the Spanish Civil War on October 28, 2007 is a politically controversial beatification of 498 Spanish Catholics who fell victim to the Spanish Civil War by Pope Benedict XVI.

prehistory

At the time of the Spanish Civil War, both parties to the civil war carried out repression campaigns against prisoners of war and sections of the civilian population in the areas they controlled, killing tens of thousands, possibly even up to two hundred thousand.

While the persecutions in the Francoist zone were directed against trade unionists and supporters of the democratically elected Popular Front government and, according to historians, claimed far more victims than the persecutions in the republican area (Bernecker speaks of 140,000 versus 50,000 fatalities), the latter were aimed at supporters of right-wing parties and especially against clergy , religious and lay Catholics . These acts of violence mainly occurred in the early days of the war and reached a climax after all but two of the Spanish bishops declared the war a “crusade” against the Republican government.

In the Franco-controlled area, too, clergy were targeted by political repression campaigns, for example when they were accused of participating in the Basque separatists' struggle for independence. According to the historian and cleric Hilari Raguer ( Montserrat Monastery ), the matter also preoccupied the Vatican. Documents in the Vatican Secret Archives documented reports of Pope Pius XI. Ildebrando Antoniutti sent to the Basque Country to protect the clergy , according to which “in Franco's Spain the priests are shot as well as in the republican zone”.

Since the 1980s, 471 martyrs of the civil war have been beatified, namely 4 bishops, 43 secular priests, 379 religious and 45 lay people. However, these were exclusively victims of the republican repression. While this was widely viewed as a continuation of the Church's vehement partisanship for the dictatorship of Franco, the Church argued in part with the fact that only persons who, on the basis of their religion and not on the basis of others, e.g., were eligible for beatification as “martyrs” of the civil war, were eligible . B. political activities.

Beatification 2007

In the numerically largest beatification in history, under the direction of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints , the Portuguese Cardinal José Saraiva Martins , after ten years of preparation on October 28, 2007, 498 other Spanish Catholics were martyred in a ceremony in St. Peter's Square in Rome beatified. 491 of the beatified were clergy (467 religious and 24 secular clergy) and seven were lay people (two of them women). Two of the clergy had lost their lives in 1934 in the context of a socialist uprising in Asturias brutally suppressed by General López Ochoa . The rest were murdered during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) as part of anti-clerical repression campaigns ; most of them in the first few weeks.

criticism

Critics call the selection of civil war victims considered arbitrary. Catholic clergy who were murdered by the Francisco Franco militias for resisting the instructions of the official church, which legitimized the fascists' actions as a "crusade", were not beatified. The close thematic and temporal connection with the enactment of the Spanish law of remembrance Ley de Memoria by the Zapatero government , which provides for extended reparations payments to the victims and for the first time officially condemned the Franco dictatorship as an injustice state: the opposition People's Party ( Partido Popular ) and smaller, right-wing extremist parties such as Falange Española, with which the Spanish Catholic Church still maintains a close relationship in some cases, had taken a massive stand against the law. The Partido Popular also sent representatives to the beatification. The thesis of a connection between the law of remembrance and beatification was supported in part by liberal church representatives such as the Archbishop of Barcelona , Lluís Martínez Sistach .

In defense of the ceremony, for example, the Bishop of Salamanca , Carlos López Hernández, argued that the martyrs in question had confessed to the conflicts of the civil war and were murdered simply because they were Catholic. Through their martyrdom they have become models of loyalty and an "invitation to reconciliation, peace and forgiveness without borders". For his part, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins stated: “The so-called republicans in Catholic Spain had developed the desire to end the Church once and for all. This allows us to understand why thousands upon thousands of people were killed just because they were Christians: priests, lay people, bishops ... The hatred of the faith, the 'odium fidei' of these gentlemen, the republicans, was the goal and the motive Who drove them and who urged them to do everything possible to shut the Church's mouth once and for all. [...] Better to give life than to deny your faith - that urges us to show just as much courage. "

The historian Julián Casanova, author of a standard work on the role of the church in the civil war, said, however, that the Catholic Church is “the only institution in the midst of the twenty-first century that keeps alive the memory of the victors of the civil war and in this way continues to do so To humiliate relatives of tens of thousands murdered by the Franquists ”.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walther L. Bernecker , Sören Brinkmann: Battle of the memories. The Spanish Civil War in Politics and Society 1936–2006. Münster, 2nd edition 2006, p. 104.
  2. ↑ Reportaje: Beatificación de la Guerra Civil Víctimas de. "¿Nosotros somos nadie o qué?" El Pais, October 27, 2007.
  3. ^ Catholic Church stands behind Franquists Telepolis, October 28, 2007.
  4. ↑ a b [1]
  5. ↑ El arzobispo de Pamplona cree "Dignos de apoyo" partidos como Falange Hoy, May 9th of 2007.
  6. ↑ Greatest beatification of all time kath.net, October 27, 2007.
  7. ↑ Spain: Cardinal defends beatification of victims of civil war ( Memento of December 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Vatican Radio, reports from October 28, 2007.
  8. ^ Casanova Ruiz, Julián, La Iglesia de Franco. Ed. Crítica, 2005. ISBN 84-8432-675-6
  9. ↑ El Pais, June 16, 2005: “… la única institución que, ya en pleno siglo XXI, mantiene viva la memoria de los vencedores de la Guerra Civil y sigue humillando con ello a los familiares de las decenas de miles de asesinados por los franquistas. "

Sources and other web links