Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

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Regardless of what the encyclic said, the truth is that in Spain the Church closely colaborated with the fascist Franco regime, to the point that in many practical respects they were one and the same.

There is ample evidence that you can find with some obvious Googling, but I think this image is a good visual summary:

https://www.gettyimages.es/detail/fotografía-de-noticias/gen...

This is how the Catholic Church treated Franco (not sporadically, but as a custom, you can find plenty of images like that): under a canopy, like they do with images of Saints or the Virgin.

I think in the face of that, anyone will agree that encyclic was not worth the paper it was written on.

Sorry, I should have made it clear from the start that I was regarding nazy Germany and fascist Italy as the "fascist regimes", Franco's Spain being fascist is debated (seems to have changed throughout time, see [1]). Interesting point for Spain though, direct religious implication in governments always seems to go wrong.

Coming back to the encyclic, I think it did have an impact, judging by the measurable refusal of Nazism in Catholic counties as mentioned in my previous comment. The Catholic Church had strong moral authority, and this kind of condemnation was rare: the Red Cross for instance did not raise any [2].

[1]: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5263342 [2]: https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/6ayg86....

Edit: grammar.

You also has Ustasě in Croatia and Josef Tiso in Slovakia. On the other hand - although Catholic higher-ups were generally spared, not the same could be said about other priests in Poland (like Kolbe) . During 2 WW, it's hard to treat Catholicism as a one religion, because it was very important to put it into national-ideological context of the country. Most often church was supporting more conservative, right-leaning groups, as a contra to socialist, who were much more anticlerical then.

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