Wednesday, 19 March 1930: Religious War of Words Continues

It's a day of religious "warfare of words."

Vatican City:  Pope Pius XI leads a special prayer service and mass at St. Peter’s for persecuted Christians in soviet Russia.  50,000 attend.  A Russian choir sings, and Orthodox Greeks join in Slavic chants during the service. 

 

Vienna:  Communists attack and break up a meeting of the Czechoslovakian Catholic People’s Party, which was protesting religious persecution in Russia. 

Moscow:  Meanwhile, the press here is full of anti-Pope messages.  The Atheist magazine publishes an article entitled, “Down With the Pope,” which calls the Pope the world’s biggest landowner and the capitalist scion of a Milan textile family.  The article goes on to boast that 33 churches, 2 cathedrals and 10 chapels were closed in one soviet in the past week, and 9 villages threw “God’s rubbish” from their homes, namely icons, church fences and bells, ecclesiastical robes and altar draperies.  The gold, silver, iron and other items filled 50 carts.  The magazine goes on to insist that the 240 remaining churches in the Moscow soviet be closed.  “We must turn the red capital into a godless city this year.” 

Pravda, official publication of the communist central committee, criticizes the Pope for his “personal enmity” for the soviets.

Berlin:  

Communist mobs attack churches holding prayer services for persecuted Christians in Russia.  The communists parade around the city all day in protest of the Pope’s prayer service in Italy.  But as night descends, they grow bolder and more violent.  In one working district, a group of communists bursts through the doors of a church shouting, “Long live the red front!” and ridiculing God.  The congregation rushes at the intruders and drives them out of the church, and a melee ensues.  Police arrive to break it up.

In another working district, communists attempt to raid a Catholic church, but are fought off by a guard established by the church members.

Yet not everything happening today is of a religious tone.  Minister of the Interior Karl Severing orders all funds for the police in the state of Thuringia suspended pending an investigation into charges that Wilhelm Frick, the nazi Minister of the Interior of that state, is plotting treason against the government.  This is in response to a manifesto issued by Frick (elected earlier this year), which denounced the federal government and called the public to support nazi ideas for nationalist rule.  The Prosecutor General will begin an investigation.