WOMEN WILL SPY ON CLERGY
Boys and girls are to be rallied to Peronism'
MEMBERS of the women's sections of the Peronist Party in the Argentine are being mobilised to spy on priests and Catholic organisations, according to reports from Santiago. Chile, where copies of a circular issued by the Peronist Superior Council in Buenos Aires have been received.
Signed by Rosa Susanne de Nova, a prominent party leader, the. circular instructs women members to set up teams to visit local churches to listen to sermons and to find out if priests in the confessional "counsel against the Government or our organisations."
It also calls for an intense campaign to rally boys and girls to Peronism.
Peronist followers belonging to Catholic Action or any other religious organisations are to continue attending meetings of these groups "in ordet to know what is happening at them" Information concerning "irregularities" or attacks on President Peron are to be relayed at once to the Superior Council.
Disturbances
The circular also instructs that measures be taken to combat "clerical organisations" which oppose Peronism, and to prevent their representatives from "acting or speaking." The measures outlined. stated the circular. arc part of a twofold movement: to ensure that the clergy will cease to get any kind of help from the Peron regime, and to make it clear that "we art fighting against those elements which attack us and not against the Catholic Church." "A Peronist leader," it goes on, "ought to be mon Peronist than anything else."
'10 appeal to women and especially to children and adolescents, the circular urges the organisation or special cinema shows and sports events.
Various groups of women have already been responsible for disturbances in churches. as, for instance, in the Santa Rosa parish in Buenos Aires, where Fr. Rodollo Carboni was arrested.
He was released after enquiries had confirmed that the incident in his church had been provoked by the "Girls of Basic Unity," a Peronist group, and not by young Catholic Action women, as had originally been charged.
Senator Elvira Rodriguez has been expelled from the Peronist Party for refusing to vote in favour of the new divorce law, and a number of priests have been arrested foi protesting against it.
The Bishops of Paraguay have sent a message to Cardinal Copelto. Archbishop of Buenos Aires. deploting the "outrage" committed by the Peron regime against the Catholic traditions ot the Argentine people.
They promise to pray to Our Lady of Lujan. Patroness of Argentina, "to give the Church strength to restore a reign of justice and of Christian peace within this Catholic nation."
Newspapers published in Mexico and El Salvador have charged that current events in Argentina are echoes of absolute monarchy and anti-clerical liberalism. and that President Peron has adopted for himself the famous phrase of Louis XIV of France: "I am the State."
A barrage of comment in the Peronist Press in Argentiva not only supports the divorce and prostitution laws but, while denying that the regime is in conflict with the Church, shows that the Peronist State is nevertheless prepared to defy the Church's teachings to satisfy what it claims to be the desires of the people.
It is trying to create a split in the ranks of the faithful and to wean them from their loyalty to the Bishops.