Word: bigart
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...Protestant in Spain today is a second-class citizen. So concludes Pulitzer-Prizewinning Reporter Homer Bigart, who last week reported on a month spent in Spain on his way home from a year's tour of duty in the Iron Curtain countries. Writing in the New York Herald Tribune, Correspondent Bigart, 41, cited some chapter & verse to back up his conclusion...
...beliefs. He is not allowed to practice his faith in public. The chapel he attends must not display any exterior evidence that it is a place of worship. It cannot advertise its existence-not even with a bulletin board. It cannot be listed in the public directories." According to Bigart, a Protestant clergyman "suffers much the same type of persecution as the Roman Catholic clergy endure in Communist Hungary," although he noted that no Protestant clergyman is in jail...
...pattern of the Protestants' lot has changed somewhat, according to Reporter Bigart, since the outbreaks of popular violence against them more than a year ago. In a 1947 pastoral letter, writes Bigart, Pedro Cardinal Segura y Saenz, Archbishop of Seville, measured Protestantism against "atheistic and Soviet Communism" as being among "other grave dangers which perhaps are more to be feared because they inspire less horror." The van-dalistic raids on Protestant churches that followed simmered down last year, when the Spanish government began to clamp down more tightly than ever on Protestant activities...
...last reported incident," Bigart writes, "occurred last summer, when 18 Protestants were arrested at Medina del Campo, near Valladolid, on charges of holding a clandestine prayer meeting. They were jailed and fined 1,000 to 2,000 pesetas (equivalent to two months' pay for the average Spanish worker...
...poor section of Madrid, Correspondent Bigart talked to the Rev. Carlos Aranjo. " 'In Madrid we can't complain,' [the Evangelical pastor] said. 'It's the national capital, and the government is anxious not to offend foreigners. But in the provinces it is quite different. Eight or ten chapels have been forced to close...