VANDAL SOVIET.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2123, 15 May 1922, Page 5

VANDAL SOVIET.

STEALS CHURCH TREASURE. TONS OP PRECIOUS METALS SEIZED, IMPOTENT MALEDICTION. [By Electric Cable —Copyright.] [Aust. and N.Z. Cable Association.] ' (Received Sunday, 7 p.m.) 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’ comissionaries. 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 Smolensk, supported by the clergy, opposed the plundering and riots followed. There were a number of casualties elsewhere, but the Boisheviks caned a meeting of workmen and explained the necessity for the confiscation was due to the famine. The worKmen then set to work themselves, rifling churches and monasteries. Five days' work in Krasniapresna resulted in five tons of silver and much gold being collected from fifty-one churches. The Patriarch issued a malediction upon the looters, but it had no result.