BELGRADE’S PROTEST.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 199, 23 July 1937, Page 7

BELGRADE’S PROTEST.

OPPOSITION TO CONCORDAT,

CABINET RESIGNATIONS.

BELGRADE, July 22. Working class crowds outside the cathedral shouted, “Down with Father Korosetch. Long live King Peter.” The police charged and clubbed them and arrested a hundred. The Serbian women are the driving force behind the opposition to the Concordat with the Vatican.

The Government spokesman in the Skupshtina denied that there had been police violence. He declared that the Bishop of Sbabat simply fell down and bumped his head. Opposition followers, amid cries of “shame,” brandished photographs of the police bludgeoning priests and threatening them with bayonets, and of the removal of the bleeding and unconscious bishop. Most of the denuties refused to look at the photographs and cheered the Prime Minister (Dr. M. Stoyadinovitch), but nine members of the Cabinet headed by the proprietor of the leading newspaper, Pravda, resigned on the ground that the Government’s action in forcing the Bill through was unconstitutional.

Father TCorosetch is Minister of the Intericr in the Yugoslavian Cabinet, which is seeking to secure ratification of a Concordat with the Vatican against the strenuous opposition of tfie supporters of tile Orthodox Church. The Bishop of Sbabat was injured in a fight between the police and Orthodox priests who attempted to hold an unauthorised procession.