Vatican Halts ‘Revolution'

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31409, 30 June 1967, Page 2

Vatican Halts ‘Revolution'

fN.Z. Press Association— Copyright)

MEDELLIN (Colombia), June 28.

The little town of Don Matias had a new parish priest today, and a big controversy was stilled.

Ordered by the Vatican to leave the mountain town, the Rev. Abelardo Arias turned over the keys of the church to a successor.

Father Arias started a revolution which aroused the anger of the conservative families in the area. Last October, for example, he fired the Capuchin nuns who ran the parish girls’ school and replaced them with lay teachers. He said the nuns discriminated against the poor by insisting that all pupils have two uniforms, sold by the school. Father Arias also formed a peasants’ co-operative to break a milk monopoly of large landowners. His superiors at Santa Rosa de Osos ordered his dismissal but he refused to leave and appealed to the Vatican.

Bishop Miguel Angel Builes sent a replacement for Father Arias, a pistolpacking priest named Santiago Echeverry.

Parishioners flocked to support Father Arias, however, and Father Echeverry soon left on a “vacation.” In February, the Vatican

ordered Father Arias to obey his bishop. A few weeks later. Pope Paul accepted the resignation of the 78-year-old Bishop Builes, who was said to have chosen Father Arias as his successor.