BLOW AT ROYALISTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 9

BLOW AT ROYALISTS.

Dire Threat To Action Francaise Partisans. ECCLESIASTICAL ORDER. (Received 11 a.m.) LONDON, March 30.

The Paris correspondent of the 'Times" says that an order, signed by French cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, bearing the Pope's approbation, instructs the clergy to emphasise, kindly but firmly, the grave canonical proscriptions existing against members and partisans of "L'Action Francaise" organisation and that" unless they retract the error of their ways and promise to have no further dealings with the Party, even by reading its newspaper, "L* Action Francaise," they will be denied burial in consecrated ground and also the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and communion.

The order specially warns members of the Party intending to marry that they will be similarly denied a religious wedding ceremony. The order, says the correspondent, recalls ecclesiastical pronouncements of the Middle Ages.

Action Francaise is the Royalist movement of France which for years ha* been waging a relentless war for the restoration of the Bourbons. The newspaper, "L'Action Francaise" is the principal vehicle of the movement's activity, which "pours vitriolic columns daily on the Republic and Republicans." In 1924 Pope Pius XI., on account of the "disgusting themes" dealt with by Daudet, Manrras. Pujo. and other scions of the movement in "L'Action Francaise," placed the paper on the Index Expurgatoris, forbidding all Catholics to read it. His Holiness considered that the Royalists were endeavouring also to use the Church for political ends. The Royalist movement extends throughout France,