Church and State in Franco´s Spain

Résumé du document

"In the last sixty years the mutation of the Spanish Catholic Church has been extraordinary. It is as though we had been watching a play of several act, complete with changes of scenery, of the plot and of the personality of the characters and even the emotional tone: furious in the thirties, exalted in the forties and fifties, troubling and inquiring in the sixties and discrete with a sense both of satisfaction and disillusion in the eighties" . This rapid look over the history of the Catholic Church in Spain underlines an important fact about Church: as all human organizations Church tends to adapt to situations to survive. If we look at Church as a world organization in the past few years it neither condemns democratic or totalitarian regimes. There are the famous Encyclical Syllabus of Errors (1864) by Pope Pius IX who condemns some of liberalism's principles-such as public education or separation of Church and State-or the Encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in which racism is denounced, but Church doesn't namely condemned democracy or totalitarianism. As long as it can function freely and in keeping with its tenets and interest, Church isn't interested in political or economic policies of any State. If we look more closely at Church during Franco's regime, the same assessment can be made: when the Civil war erupted in July 1936, clerical support was overwhelmingly in favor of the military rebellion lead by Franco.

Extraits

[...] But the real bombshell happened during the Second Vatican Council opened by Leon XII in January 1959 and closed by Pope Paul VI in October 1962. In this Council, the aged bishops were counterbalanced by a young clergy who had no personal memories of the civil war and the Second Republic and who found themselves opposed to their spiritual superiors. Many of the young clergymen were involved in workers Catholics organizations, and thus aware of the social problems from which suffered the Spanish population and more in favor of liberalism and modernism. [...]

[...] The religious publications were complete free from State hindrance (which is an important point in the last years of Franco's regime) and religious lessons and exams were compulsory from the first school to the University. The crucifix was re integrated in courts and the judge's traditional religious oath was re enforced. At this time, priests had great social prestiges which furthered a lot of young people who came from a poor background to become clergymen. In 1953 the Concordat between the Holy See and Franco was signed, it mainly gathered all privileges granted by Franco to the Church. [...]

[...] To really infiltrate the worker class, the CA created within the organization the Hermandaades Obreras de Acción Católica (HOAC). The working class which was repressed by the unique authorized syndicate of the Phalange, (the Sindicatos) were tempted by this organization, all the more so since that the CA had always been seen social in outlook. A powerful youth branch, the Juventud Obrera Católica was set up few years later and others workers organizations were then created (for example the Felipe). [...]

[...] The reactionary coalition which supported the nationalist uprising was a conglomerate of diverse and hardly reconcilable tendencies. First of all, the mistrust between generals and chief officers- who initiated the uprising- and civilian population was reciprocal. Military despised civilians for their lack of discipline and efficiency and the civilians disdain military for their lack of political views and ambitions. In addition to that, civilians were, among themselves, divided into three main tendencies. The first was the fascist one, represented by the Phalange, which tended to be secular, anti monarchist and anti capitalist group. [...]

[...] The Franco‘s repression towards the clergy spread and even concerned the most high ranked clergyman as Dom Aureli Escarré, famous members of the Notre- Dame de Montserrat abbey, who in an article in Le Monde stated his hostility towards Franco's regime which didn't settle “peace but victory in Spain”. Dom Aureli Escarré was dismissed for “health reason” few days after the article was published. But the confrontations between the rebellious clergy and Franco regime were sometimes, and more and more often, violent. In 1965 began the Capuchinda during which the police besieged the Capuchin de Sierra convent where numerous communists found refugee. [...]