PERSECUTION IN SPAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1944, Page 4

PERSECUTION IN SPAIN

CHARGES BY RELIGIOUS

BODY

LONDON", December 5. The world's Evangelical Alliance alleges that the Franco regime is persecuting and even executing Protestants m Spain, says the "toaily Telegraph." The alliance has laid the following details before the Foreign Office and* circulated them among members of the House of Commons:— (1) Nearly all Spanish Protestant places" of worship have been closed. (2) A number of pastors and evangelists and a far larger number of church members have been executed. (3) Protestant religious meetings are not allowed in the greater part of Spain. (4) Except for the Roman Catholic version with notes the Bible is not allowed to be printed or circulated. (5) The British and Foreign Bible Society's stock in Madrid, consisting of 110,000 copies of Bibles and Testaments, has been confiscated. (6) Foreign missionaries! have had to leave Spain. ' The alliance further declares that two-thirds of the Spanish' pastors, i evangelists, and colporteurs have been exiled, imprisoned, or executed, and a number have died in prison. Children of Protestant parents are compelled to learn the Roman Catholic catechism and to worship images of the Virgin Mary. Attendances at mass in many places are compulsory to procure employment, and a young Protestant was recently sent to a concentration camp for refusing to attend mass. Mr. Isaac Foot, chairman of the executive council of the World's Evangelical Alliance, and also the honorary and general secretaries of the alliance, have sent a letter to the House of Lords setting out the above charges. '