POPE'S INTERVENTION.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 15 May 1922, Page 5

POPE'S INTERVENTION.

LOOTING OF RUSSIAN CHURCHES.' ROME, May 13. The Pope's intervention at Genoa is connected with the Soviet's wholesale looting of Russian churches and mon- , asteries, Catholic as well as orthodox suffering. After the Soviet had used (up two milliards taken from the gold I reserve, which was used for revolutionary propaganda abroad, the Govern- \ ment decided to raid the treasuries of j ■ the churches. Dedicatory jewels from ■ | ikons were sold abroad, and precious' metal was melted down by the people's commissaries. Systematically they visited every town and village in their collection of many tons of gold and silver, and thus 223 milliard roubles of silver ■ were collected. The people in some towns, including ; Smolensk, supported by the clergy, op- ! posed the plundering, and riots followed. There were a number of casual- . ties elsewhere. The Bolsheviks called a meeting of workmen and explained the necessity for confiscation, which i was said to be due to the famine. The , workmen then set to work themselves ! I rifling churches and monasteries. Five ' days' work in Krasniapresna resulted in five tons of silver and much gold bei ing collected from 51 churches. The Patriarch issued a malediction upon the tasters^ but it had no result.