LOOTING CHURCHES.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4590, 16 May 1922, Page 4

LOOTING CHURCHES.

(By Electric Cable—Copyright.) iAust. and- tahle Association.) Rome, May 13. The Pope's intervention at Genoa is in connection with the Soviet's wholesale looting of Russian churches and monasteries, Catholic as well as Orthodox suffering. After the Soviet had used up the two milliards of roubles, taken from the gold reserve, which was used for revolutionary propaganda abroad, the Government decided to raid the treasuries of the churches. Dedicatory jewels from Ikons were sold abroad, the, precious metal being melted down by the peoples' coinmissionaries. Systematically, they visited every town and village in the collection of many tons of gold and silver. Thus, 223 milliard roubles of silver were collected. The people in some towns, including Smlensk, supported by the clergy, opposed the plundering and riots followed. . I There were a number of casualties elsewhere, but the Bolsheviks called a meeting of workmen and explained the necessity for the confiscation was due to the famine. The workmen) then set to work themselves, rifling ehurches and monasteries. Five days work in Krasniapresna resulted in five tons of silver and much gold being collected from 51 churches. The Patriarch issued a malediction upon the looters, but it had no result.