Spain might end concordat

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33479, 9 March 1974, Page 15

Spain might end concordat

A Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

MADRID, March 8.

The Bishop of Bilbao, who has started a Church-State row over his call for wider freedom for Spanish Basques, held an emergency meeting with Spain’s bishops today amid speculation that the Government might cancel the concordat with the Vatican.

The Bishop, 64-year-old Monsignor Antonio Anoveros, left Bilbao yesterday, after spending a week under virtual house arrest, for a ninehour meeting with the Pope’s representati. e. The Government has said that a sermon he circulated urging more freedom for the Basques was “a verv grave attack against Spanish national unity.” The Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Luigi Dadaglio. later had a meeting with the Prime Minister (Mr Carlos Arias Navarro) who then reported to the Head of State (General Francisco Franco). No details of the talks were made public. The consultations gave rise to speculation that the Government might be about to cancel the 21-year-old concordat with the Vatican governing Church-State relations in Spain. This was not immediately ruled out by officials and a Government spokesman said that he could neither con-; firm nor deny it. The Cabinet will hold a regular session today. Under the agreement, the Roman Catholic Church, which supported General Franco’s nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, gets State financial aid in return for certain privileges, and recognition of Roman Catholicism

as the official religion of Spain. Breaking the agreement would in effect disestablish the Church.