"The church remained a fervent ally of the (Franco) regime. Characteristic of the regime's propagandists was the depiction on nearly all its postage stamps of views of cathedrals, taking the place of the faces of republican or socialist leaders. Divorces and civil marriages concluded under the republic were annulled. Sermons were often close to political harangues. Priests would often end their sermons with a iViva Espaņa! or a viva for the Generalissimo. One Sunday, in the monastery of La Merced at Burgos, during high mass, the priest broke off spontaneously in the middle of administering the sacrament.

"'O, you that hear me! You who call yourselves Christians! You are to blame for much that has happened. For you have tolerated in your midst, yea, and even employed in your service workmen banded together in organisations hostile to our God and our country. You have heeded not our warnings and have consorted with jews and freemasons, athiests and renegades, so helping to strengthen the power of the very lodges whose aim it was to hurl us all into chaos. Be warned of the tragedies of today! You should be to all those people - as we must all be - as fire to water... no dealings with them of any kind... no pardon for criminal destroyers of churches and murderers of holy priests and ministers. Let their seed be stamped out - the evil seed - the seed of the Devil. For verily the sons of Beelzebub are also the enemies of God.'"

Thomas, H., The Spanish Civil War (London: Pelican, 1977), pp. 510-12.

In the largest such ceremony in recent history, at St Peter's Square in the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI recently beatified 500 priests who were killed defending the church's brutally pro-Franco and pro-fascist cruzada against the democratically elected Spanish republic in the 1936-39 civil war.