Czech Catholic Prelates Charged With Treason And Spying For Vatican

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23218, 1 April 1950, Page 5

Czech Catholic Prelates Charged With Treason And Spying For Vatican

(N.Z.P.A. —Renter—Copyright.) ;(10.45 a.m.) PRAGUE, March 31. The Vatican sought to destroy people’s democratic republics and replace them by a new Central European federation under the Hapsburgs, the prosecutor said at the trial today of 10 high-ranking dignitaries of the Homan Catholic Church who are charged with anti-State activities.

The defendants are three abbots who have the power of bishops and seven other churchmen, including a professor of theology and a rector of a college. All 10 monks are accused of high treason and all except one were charged With espionage. Five Others Involved Ceteka, the official Czech news agency, said the accused were charged with having worked for the espionage services of the Vatican with having carried on subversive activities against the Czechoslovak Republic on behalf of the Vatican, a Power hostile to Czechoslovakia, and with having plotted a coup against the State. Ceteka said the State prosecutor told the court that each of the five different Roman Catholic orders represented among the accused had received specific tasks. The Premonstratensians represented by the three accused were instructed to prepare an armed rising and to this end concealed arms in their monasteries. Jesuits represented by three of the

accused were mainly concerned with espionage, the prosecutor said. The Redemptorists, represented by two accused, sought to influence the minds of youths and to return them to unthinking and willing tools of foreign reaction.

The Franciscans, represented by one accused, sought to sabotage socialism in the villages and to prepare an armed rising.

A Dominican was to be the link between these church orders and the High Church hierarchy. U.S. and German Weapons Hidden

Ceteka said that American firearms and German automatic pistols and other weapons “hidden by the monks in the monasteries’’ were exhibited in court today. Gold and jewels which the monks at one monastery were alleged to have hidden away when the' State took over all church property under the new church laws were also displayed. The State prosecutor said that immediately after the war the Vatican ranged itself alongside American' imperialism and missionaries of the Vatican were sent into Soviet Russia as spies.

The Vatican sought to destroy the people’s democratic republics and replace them by a new Central European federation under the Hapsburgs. Ceteka said that Father Augustin Machalka Abbot, of the Pfemonstrate Monastery at Nova Rise. Moravia, had pleaded guilty to charges of high treason and espionage and confessed to having taken part in a whispering campaign against the State. The agency said that Machalka replied “yes” in a low and humble voice when asked whether he had hidden a loaded pistol in the church confessional. The trial is proceeding.