Priests protest

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33381, 13 November 1973, Page 17

Priests protest

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MADRID, Nov. 12. About 150 demonstrators, among them priests and nuns, filed out of the Vatican Embassy in Madrid yesterday after a 20-hour sit-in in support of six Spanish priests on a prison hunger strike.

A heavy detachment of armed police who had been on guard outside the fourstorey embassy since the beginning of the protest last night, withdrew a few minutes before the demonstrators emerged. No arrests were made, apparently because an agreement had been reached to allow the demonstrators to leave without fear of detention. Monsignor Dante Pasquinelli, counsellor at the nunciature, declined to discuss the situation. “There was no problem — as you can see, all the people have left,” he said. The demonstrators looked unkempt after their long vigil, and refused to talk to reporters. In the northern Basque industrial city of Bilbao, more than 50 priests continued their sit-in at the palace of the bishop, Mgr Antonio Anoveros, in support of the six gaoled priests. The protesting priests had ignored the bishop’s warning that he regarded their action as "a serious act of disobedience,” but 15 of them did leave the palace yesterday morning to officiate at Sunday services, returning later to continue their protest. The six priests for whom the Madrid and Bilbao protests were held today began their seventh day without food dr drink at a special detention centre for clergy at Zamora, west of Madrid. The priests, imprisoned for political offences, started a fire at the prison last Tuesday, and began the fast to dramatise their demands that the centre be closed down and to support their demand for transfer to other prisons. Their condition is now said to be very weak.