A grim warning

CONGO P.M. HITS AT MISSIONS
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freedom " and says that " the Congolese Communist Party is equipped to organise the proletariat and all the oppressed working people with a view to the class struggle ".
The Communist threat to the Congo is further underlined by a second statement issued by Bishop Malula. the Congolese auxiliary of Leopoldville, in which he tells his fellow-citizens: " Our country is threatened by the propaganda of atheistic materialism."
Repeating his warnings against lies and distorted news-which we reported fully a fortnight agothe bishop says: " Truth is neither white nor black . .. Truth delivers us from the slavery of error and of falsehood.
" Those whose business it is to guide nations do not have the right to make the people they rule the slaves of error and of falsehood by information that is deliberately contrary to reality and to truth."
The bishop courageously goes on to attack the "strange blindness" that seeks to present the work of colonisation as nothing but an "abomination of desolation" and a "shameless exploitation" of man by man.
`STAY ON'
Addressing the missionaries. Bishop Malula appeals to them to stay "to teach our brothers the truth that sets free. the faith that saves. the love that unites" and to work in the Congo's schools and hospitals.
Referring to the violence that several of them have been subjected to, he says: "1 know that. following the example of Christ, you have already forgiven those who have jeered at you and in sulted you' • Finally, in his warning against atheist propaganda, the bishop recalls an address he gave in Brussels in 1958 when he emphasised the African's "sense of God": "Nobody in the world has the right to kill in the Bantu soul the religious feelings which the Creator has placed there," Religion was not an importation into the Congo, but laicism, on the other hand, "brought into the Congo by the enemies of God," had nothing ennobling about it.
"Are we to introduce into our Congo this by-product of western civilisation which, in certain European countries, has once again been at the root of empty and sterile educational battles?" asks Bishop Malula. "No: for the true nationalists of the Congo, for all those who sincerely love this country, laicism is art attack on the religious life of the Bantu people, whose public, family, and private life is completely impregnated with religious feeling."
PROGRAMME
Other reports from Ldopoldville make clear what it is that Bishop Malula is attacking here. In his Government's programme, which has not yet been presented to the Congolese Parliament, M. Patrice Lumumba calls for "the absolute separation of Church and State" and says: "The Republic of the Congo will be a secularist and democratic State, governed by the people and for the people . . . "The Government will use all possible means to prevent any religion whatever from being imposed directly or indirectly, particularly by means of education The Government asks all religious of all confessions to stay in their proper domain worship, religions instruction, works of charity and not to use education as a means of political propaganda." Nationalising the mission schools would increase the Government's educational budget from about £17,000,000 to £67,000.000, M. Lumurnha has been accused of setting up a Marxist dictatorship by the Union of Congolese Workers: formerly the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions. The Union strongly attacks the Government's economic policies.
M. Kashamura, the Minister of information, has apparently dropped the charges he made against Bishop Malula and Mgr. Luc Dillon, rector of the Lovanium, of being implicated in a plot to kill M. Lumumba.