Word: communist
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Bari, a struggling blacksmith, Angelo Pantoso, fretted: "I believe in God. God protected me at war, but when I came back home, only the Communist Party explained the cause of my poverty. Now there is a storm in my mind...
...They Are Not Forsaken." East of the Iron Curtain, the decree has a somewhat different purpose and effect. The Vatican said that the decree was designed to give Catholics in Communist lands "the sensation that they are not forsaken, but spiritually supported by the whole Catholic world...
...these countries, Communist pressure on the church has been mounting. Its immediate goal is not to root out Catholicism but to reduce it to helpless captivity. The Kremlin succeeded in that policy with the once great Russian Orthodox Church, and it is trying to repeat the formula. The trial of Cardinal Mindszenty was part of the operation. The persecution in Hungary was followed by efforts to split the Church in Czechoslovakia away from Rome...
Shortly before Pope Pius XII published the decree, Czech Communists had taken another step in their assault on Prague's Archbishop Beran and his hierarchy. In a memorandum signed by Party Secretary Rudolf Slansky, plans were made to build up a government-controlled national church. Another circular detailed punishments for priests who had read Beran's pastoral letters denouncing Communist persecution of the church. "Finally," said the circular, "we shall accuse [the Catholic hierarchy] directly of high treason...
...excommunication order forced Czech Communists to hurl accusations of treason faster than they intended. Minister of Justice Alexej Cepicka blared that Beran had maintained "treacherous connections with foreign enemies" and plotted "treacherous anti-state riots." "Let no one doubt," the minister went on, "that today anyone who . . . tries in any way to carry out the Vatican's orders commits treason against the vital principles of his own state and people." Cepicka lists himself officially as a Catholic. He is a son-in-law of Communist Boss Klement Gottwald...