SOVIET PERSECUTION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 63, 10 February 1930, Page 7

SOVIET PERSECUTION.

POPE’S CONDEMNATION. ROME. Feb. 8. His Holiness the Pope, in a letter t° Cardinal Ompili, condemns the sacrilegious wickedness perpetrated in Russia against God and against the souls of men, and invites Bishojjs and Catholics throughout the world to pray for the cessation of the moral and material destruction of religions, constituting one-sixth of those in the globe. His Holiness announces that he will celebrate at St. Peter’s, on March 19 a Mass of Atonement for propitiation and reparation. He deplores the Soviet’s perversion of youth, contamination of souls with all sorts of vices, and the destruction of intelligence and human nature.

The Pope adds that had the nations assembled at the Genoa Conference in 1922 acceded to his request to agree to insist on religious freedom in Russia, it would have spared many evils. The material interests which had prevented such response would have been better served if the Governments had respected the interests of God. M. KERENSKY’S EXPLANATION. (Times Cables). LONDON, Feb. 8. M. Kerensky, ex-Prime Minister of Russia, stated in the eoun=e of a speech he delivered at Oxford to-dav: “Foreigners are often amazed at the passivity with which Russians bear the Soviet’s outrageous insults on religion, but to judge fairly one must remember the constant requisitions, espionage, and terrorism, including executions averaging five daily, to which the Rus>sians are subjected.” M. Kerensky added that everyone was solely dependent on the Government, which was the only employer. Any expressions of religious convictions meant unemployment, the withdrawal of the ration card, and a speedy death from starvation. The Red army’s officers and soldiers were in an even more unenviable position. In pursuance of the policy of making the army the nursery of atheism, men were subjected continually to spying openly and secretly. These persecutions were tending to .unite the population in a common hatred of the Dictatorship.