Word: blandino
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Cautiously Blandino added: "This has nothing to do with politics. It is entirely religious." But to other Italians, and other churchmen, his gesture did not seem entirely devoid of a political background. During World War II, Blandino had served as an army chaplain in the Albanian, Greek and North African campaigns. In 1943 he had joined Mussolini's diehard "Salo Republic" in northern Italy. Does he now sympathize with Fascist principles? Replies Blandino: "A call went out for chaplains to administer spiritual comfort. A priest must not interest himself in politics...
Near war's end, Blandino was clapped into a Turin jail by Italian partisans, released after a year. He went to Switzerland and this year returned to Italy. He re-established contacts with ex-servicemen and chaplains of Mussolini's Republican Army and with the neo-Fascist Movimento Italiano Femminile (Italian Women's Movement), to whom he propounded his idea: revive the Mercedarian tradition for liberation of Italy's 20 war criminals convicted by Allied tribunals, and 1,600 sentenced by Italian courts. Embittered ex-servicemen, theological students, relatives of prisoners gave him support-offers...
During Easter week, with valise and violin, Blandino went to Procida. There he dispatched letters to the Pope and to the Italian President, Premier and Minister of Justice, renewing his plea for legal recognition of voluntary substitutions. He slept on a cot in the same room with other prisoners, set up an altar in the reception room, commiserated with the war criminals and their visiting relatives. To newsmen he said: "Why have the Allies let big people go, and let the innocent ones who can't afford lawyers stay in jail? These people had to do as they were...
...Mercedarian. Blandino said he intended to remain on Procida until the government recognized the principle of voluntary substitutions. His movement, he predicted, would spread until all war prisoners had been liberated. But his Franciscan superiors gave him no encouragement. "The custom of voluntary substitution,""said one of them, "was never in our code." A Vatican aide brushed off Blandino as "an esaltato [fanatic] who defied discipline. To preserve the peace of Saint Francis it is best to ignore a mistaken effort to bring the peace of Saint Francis to others...
...particularly strong cry of indignation rose from Mercedarian headquarters, disturbed from a century of obscurity. Snapped a Mercedarian father: "Blandino isn't of us. The Mercedarians never volunteered to substitute for political prisoners. They were only interested in religious prisoners whose faith might waver under persecution and imprisonment. We want no part of politics...