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American Society of Church History

The Evangelization of Franco's "New Spain"Author(s): William J. CallahanSource: Church History, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Dec., 1987), pp. 491-503Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of ChurchHistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3166430Accessed: 25/11/2009 11:49

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The Evangelization ofFranco's"New Spain"WILLIAMJ. CALLAHAN

On 20 May 1939 General Francisco Franco attended the solemn Te Deumservice held at the royal church of Santa Barbara to celebrate the triumph ofnationalist over republican Spain. Surrounded by the symbols of Spain'sCatholic past, including the standard used by Don Juan of Austria atLepanto, the general presented his "sword of victory" to Cardinal Goma,archbishop of Toledo and primate of the Spanish church.' The ceremonysymbolized the close ties between church and state formed by three years ofcivil war. The new regime had given proof of its commitment to the churcheven before the conflict had ended, and the clergy now looked forward to theimplementation of a full range of measures in education, culture, and theregulation of public morality, measures that had last been seen in Spain overa century before.2The end of the war and the permanent installation of the dictatorshipwereaccompanied by what many clerics believed was a religious revival. TheCatholic press rarely let a day pass without making satisfied comment onexamples of tremendous attendance at religious services:the vast crowd, someof it perched in trees and on lampposts, that viewed the Corpus Christiprocession in Madrid in June 1939; the 50,000 people who journeyed inarmy trucks to a ceremony marking the reconstruction of the nationalmonument to the Sacred Heart a month later; the 300,000 in March 1940who participated in the First Friday devotion to the Sacred Heart in thecelebrated shrine to Jesus the Nazarene in the capital.3 These impressivedisplays, repeatedwith infinite variety in the years immediately following thewar, convinced the clergy that the country was making "an affirmation offaith" of extraordinary proportions.4

1. Ya, 21 May 1939; Teodoro Rodriguez, Asi es Espana y asi la antiespaia (Madrid, 1942),p. 275.2. The abrogationof the Republic's legislation that was regardedas hostile to the church beganearly in the history of the regime. A decree of 22 September 1936, for example,re-established the confessionalityof the public school system. Other measures, however, suchas the abolition of divorce, were not taken until after the war had ended. R. S. Madrid, "Laensefanza religiosa en la nueva Espana," Razbn y Fe (1938), no. 114, pp. 38-39; GuyHermet, Les catholiquesdans l'Espagnefranquiste, 2 vols. (Paris, 1980-1981), 2: 93.3. Ya,9 June 1939, 19 July 1939, 2 March 1940.4. Ibid., 4 March 1940.Mr. Callahan is professor of history in the University of Toronto, Toronto,Canada.

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CHURCH HISTORYAny attempt to understand the development of religiosity in Franco's"New Spain" must take into account the condition of the church both prior tothe outbreak of hostilities and during the conflict itself. The extravagantrhetoric of clerical partisans of a revived Catholic Spain, as well as the highly

privileged status of the church under the new regime, has obscured a simplefact: the church faced a crisis of staggering dimensions in 1939. Long beforethe beginning of the civil war, it was evident that religious indifference andoutright hostility against the church, sometimes expressed in violent form,had made spectacular progress among both urban industrial workers and thelandless agricultural laborers of certain regions, notably Andalusia, Extre-madura, and La Mancha.5 The church did succeed, of course, in holding itsown in some areas, such as the sturdily Catholic peasant districts of OldCastile, Leon, the Basque provinces, Navarra, and Galicia where, accordingto a missionary preacher of the day, a "traditional and honest Christianity"was still practiced.6 It is also clear that the church managed to retain influenceover the more conservative urban middle classes.7

The alienation of the urban working class and the landless laborers of thesouth in the 1930s constituted an obvious problem for the church. Given thegreat variety of religious activities in the country and Spain's strong regionaldifferences, it is more difficult to provide an assessment of the quality ofSpanish Catholicism before the proclamation of the Republic in 1931.However, there were critics within the church then who viewed the state ofSpanish Catholicism with deep apprehension. The Augustinian Bruno deIbeas, writing in 1914, believed that Catholicism in Spain had become "amixture of formalistic and routine devotion and of unconscious credulity."The faith of many, he maintained, "is not rational and concrete and evendisplays idolatrous characteristics."8 The Dominican Jose Gafo expressedsimilar sentiments more than a decade later. Although admitting that signs of

5. An astute clerical observer remarked in 1909: "Today, there are great nuclei of workers whonot only do not practice a religious life, but also hate it." Similarly, one of the few statisticalstudies of religious practice carried out before the war painted a devastating picture ofdechristianization in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao. Jose de los Perales Gutierrez, Elproblema religioso en Espana (Madrid, 1909), p. 101; Francisco Peir6, El problemareligioso-social de Espaiia, 2d ed. (Madrid, 1936), p. 14. For a general discussion ofdechristianizationin late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Spain, see W. J. Callahan,"Was Spain Catholic?" Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hzspanicos2 (1984): 159-182.6. Pedro R. Santidrian, El Padre Sarabia escribe su historia (1875-1958): medzo siglo demzsionesen Espana (Madrid, 1963), p. 141.7. Although commitment to the church was strongest in the northern countryside, the layleaders of such groups as Catholic Action, founded after the turn of the century to promotethe church's interests in a rapidly secularizing society, were drawn in the vast majorityfromthe conservative,educated professional classes of the cities. Thus Father Angel Ayala, whoestablished one of the most influential groups within Catholic Action, the Asociaci6nCat6lica Nacional de Jovenes Propagandistas, recruited the first members from amongstudents of the elite Jesuit secondary school located on the calle de Areneros in Madrid.Francisco Cervera, Angel Ayala (Madrid, 1975), pp. 132-136.8. Bruno Ibeas, "Nuestro Christianismo,"Espana y America 3 (1914): 514.

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FRANCO'S "NEW SPAIN"spiritual vitality were present in the "countless religious functions, proces-sions, novenas, pilgrimages . . . and indications of every kind," he sawSpanish Catholicism as suffering from "a state of weariness to the point ofboredom."9It is impossible to establish to what extent these pessimistic assessmentswere justified. But the impression of clerical languor in the face of signs ofreligious crisis is not entirely accurate. The church attempted, albeit withlimited success, to launch a program of social action through rural creditunions and cooperativesand Catholic labor syndicates. It also mounted effortsto introduce the liturgical reforms promoted by Pius X and to improvecatechetical instruction.?1 There is little evidence, however, that theseprograms penetrated to the mass of the country's 20,000 parishes. Fewpastoral initiatives were undertaken; the church continued to emphasize"liturgical and extra-liturgical acts, the administration of the sacraments ...and these acts of the cult were carried out solemnly, almost spectacularly, aswas the custom then."11Clerical preoccupations with the religious condition of the country gaveway to direct political concerns following the introduction of secularizinglegislation by the Republic between 1931 and 1933. Relations betweenchurch and state during this period have received extensive study. I do notpropose to discuss them other than to note that the Republic destroyed thefinancial, legal, and educational privileges that the church had enjoyed since1875. Priests and their lay supporters became obsessed with defending thechurch's traditional privileges, and this defense assumed an overtly politicalcharacter. 2

9. Jose D. Gafo, "La situaci6n religiosa en Espaiia," La Ciencia Tomista 36 (1927): 381. AFrench Catholic journal was equally critical of the emphasis of the Spanish church onabundant popular devotions,processions,pilgrimages, and the like. It expressed "uneasinessabout the future of religion" in the country if the church failed to become more vigorous."Ou va l'Espagne," Les dossiers de l'Action Populaire 234 (1930): 4. Not all moderncommentators would share this view. Josep Massot i Muntaner, who has written extensivelyon the church in Catalonia, refers to "a revitalization of the clergy" and "a renovation of thepastoral" in the region after the turn of the century: L'Esglesia catalana al segle XX(Barcelona, 1975), pp. 24, 36-37. There is no evidence, however, that this "renovation"hadany effect on the dechristianized workers of Catalonia.10. In 1908, for example, a national congress to reform sacred music took place in Seville; asimilar group met at Valladolid in 1913 to propose measures to improve the quality ofreligious education. Cr6nica del Segundo Congreso Nacional de Musica Sagrada (Seville,1909); Cr6nicaoficial delprimer CongresoCatequisticoNacional Espaiol, 2 vols. (Valladol-id, 1913).11. Vicente Enrique y Tarancon, Recuerdos de juventud (Barcelona, 1984), p. 70. In theirwell-documented study of the church in Galicia during the Republic, Francisco Carballoand Alfonso Magarifios observed that the "organization of the cult .. absorbed ... all itsenergies practically speaking." La Iglesia en la Galicia contemporanea:analisis hist6ricoyteol6gicodelperiodo, 1931-1936, H Republica (Madrid, 1978), p. 321.12. Frances Lannon, "The Church's Crusade against the Republic," in Revolution and War inSpain, 1931-1939, ed. Paul Preston (London, 1984), pp. 46-47.

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CHURCH HISTORYThe effect of these turbulent years on the church as a religious institutionhas received much less scholarly attention. Yet the most influential Catholicnewspaper in the country, El Debate, claimed repeatedly that the time of trialintroduced by republican anticlerical legislation had reinvigorated SpanishCatholicism with a "rebirth of fervor in the entire country." Could theexistence of a religious revival be denied, asked another contemporaryobserver, "when our churches in all major cities and towns are seen to befull ?"When had Spain ever witnessed "morefervor,more frequent receptionof the sacraments,"than between 1931 and 1933?13Little objective information is available to substantiate these claims. It istrue that certain lay associations experienced a significant expansion duringthe Republic. The Association of Fathers of Families, founded in 1911 todefend the church's role in education, had languished during the 1920s butsaw its membership increase from 9,000 in 1931 to 85,000 by 1934.14However, other indications suggest that the much vauntedreligious revivalofthe early 1930s was far from being as complete and penetrating as itsproponents claimed. There is no evidence that the church reversed itsdeclining fortunes among the working classes. Statistics on the reception ofthe last sacramentsby the dying in the Catalan industrial town of Mataro, forexample, show a distinct slippage in the number receiving the last ritesbetween 1930 and 1934.15 Nor was there any improvement in religiouspractice in the dechristianized towns of the southern countryside.16Within the church some critics expressed doubts about the extent andcharacterof a religious revival. A well-known Redemptorist missionary whohad preachedthroughoutthe country during the period believedthat a revivalhad taken place but that it would not prove "very lasting." Another critic sawthe embracing of religion by some middle-class youth as motivated more byaesthetic and political considerationthan by spiritual conversion.This was "aCatholicism that had little of the theological about it."17 If there was areligious revival during the Republic, it was intimately linked to the political

13. El Debate, 3 April 1932. In its issue of 1 January 1933, the newspaper claimed that "arenovation of religious life as is now taking place has been seen in Spain for many years."Eloy Montero y Gutierrez, El porvenir de la Iglesia de Espana (Madrid, 1933), p. 147.14. El Debate, supplement, 1 January 1935. Similarly, the number of local centers of a Catholicyouth group associated with Catholic Action expanded from 700 in 1928 to 1,400 by 1933.Ibid., 1 January 1933.15. Rogelio Duocastella, Matar6 1955: estudiode sociologiareligiosasobreuna ciudad industrialespaiola (Barcelona, 1961), p. 291.16. Lannon, "The Church's Crusade against the Republic," pp. 51-52.17. Santidrian, El Padre Sarabia escribe su historia, p. 253; H. R. Romero Flores, Perfil moralde nuestra hora (Madrid, 1935), p. 69. Even in regions traditionally known for religiosity,the church encountered difficulties. A series of missions held in the rural districts of theprovince of Burgos in 1933, for example, produced indifferent results and led to theconclusion: "Levels of religious practice have gone down since the advent of the Republic,especially among the young." Boletin de la Obra de la Defensa de la Fe en Espaia (1935),no. 94, p. 130.

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FRANCO'S "NEW SPAIN"reaction of the Catholic middle classes and small agricultural proprietors incertain regions against a regime that threatened both ecclesiastical privilegeand class interest. El Debate left its readers in no doubt on this point: "a manof the right must be Catholic before and above all else." "The splendidmanifestations of religious faith" seen throughout the nation were due to the"persecution," inflicted by the Republic, which united "all the forces of theright... in defense of the faith and the rights of the Church."'8The rising of the generals against the Republic on 18 July 1936dramatically altered the position of the church. In territories under national-ist control the church recoveredmany of the privileges that it had lost between1931 and 1933. In republican Spain hostility against the church for itssupport of the military rising quickly led to reprisals. Attacks on churchesbegan in Barcelona on the morning of 19 July as the authorities arrestedpriests on a large scale. During the months following the outbreak of the war,a wave of violence directedagainst the clergy and church buildings swept therepublican zone.19The church suffered immense human and material losses in republicanSpain during the war. Although government officials and local populationssometimes did their best to save priests from the fury of anticlericalrevolutionary groups operating outside the law, the toll in lives reached grimproportions:4,184 secular priests, 2,365 priests from the religious orders, and283 nuns. The loss of approximately 20 percent of the nation's clergybetween 1936 and 1939 meant a drastic loss of personnel. Losses were greaterin some dioceses than others, however. Toledo lost 47.6 percent of its clergy;Tortosa, 61.9; Lerida, 65.8; and Barbastro, 87.8 percent. Material losseswere also devastating as churches were destroyed, closed, or converted toother uses. In the diocese of Barcelona alone, 300 parish churches and morethan 500 chapels and shrines were burned to the ground.20Within republican Spain the church was thrown into disarray. The formalecclesiastical organization collapsed upon the execution of twelve of thetwenty-eight bishops in the Republic and the rapid departure of theremainder to either exile or the nationalist zone.2' In some districts, however,an underground church was able to function through clandestine networks18. El Debate, 17 November, 3 April 1932.19. Jose Sanabre Sanroma, Matirologio de la Iglesia en la di6cesis de Barcelona durante lapersecucion religiosa, 1936-1939 (Barcelona, 1943), pp. 29-30. The standard work on thistopic is Antonio Montero, Historia de la persecuci6n religiosa en Espafa, 1936-1939(Madrid, 1961). Although generally regarded as an impressive work of scholarship, thisstudy has been subject to criticism for its failure to distinguish the distinct phases ofanticlerical violence in republican Spain. See the perceptivereview of Hilari Raguer, Revued'histoireecclesiastique57 (1962): 618-630.20. Montero, Historia de la persecucion religiosa, pp. 762, 763-764, 633. For the efforts ofrepublican authorities to save priests from certain death, see Hilari Raguer, La espaday lacruz: la Iglesia, 1936-1939 (Barcelona, 1977), pp. 170-174.21. Montero, Historia de la persecucion religiosa, p. 83.

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CHURCH HISTORYusing safe houses and a variety of subterfuges. As political conditionsimproved in the Republic with greater government control exerted overrevolutionary groups, the underground church was able to function withsurprising regularity, in part because republican officials turned a blind eyeto religious activities of which they were perfectly aware. By mid-1937 it wasestimated that approximately 2,500 priests lived in hiding in Barcelona andthat they said more than 2,000 masses a day.22 But in spite of the relativesuccess of the underground church in Barcelona, the situation elsewhere,particularly in rural areas where identification of the clergy was easier thanin a large metropolitan center, made even clandestine practice difficult. AtVinaroz, for instance, the few priests who survived in hiding during the wardid not dare to carry on religious activities for fear of discovery.23In nationalist Spain the church encountered a situation highly favorable toits interests. The story of clerical support for Franco during the war is wellknown. But behind the extravagant rhetoric exalting this "great spiritual andcultural crusade" lay an awareness of the immense problems facing thechurch in spite of the defeat of those whom it judged to be its enemies.24 Thetriumph of the nationalist cause seemed to offer an opportunity to rechristian-ize the nation that had appeared impossible a few years before. "Ourrevolution," said a Dominican apologist for the regime in 1938, "can bringabout a renaissance of an age of faith that definitively had been judged aslost." The war served a providential purpose to advance the cause of religion:"the victory of nationalist arms has opened the field to apostolic activity...This extraordinary historical opportunity cannot be lost."25To seize this unexpected opportunity, the church, with the enthusiasticcooperation of the civil authorities, relied on a strong dose of social compul-sion that embraced education, culture, and public morality.26 Moreover,clerical interests were served well by the presence in the government ofofficials who had been active members of the influential Catholic Actionmovement. This support was undoubtedly satisfying, but it could not disguisethe immense difficulties facing the church as it sought to realize its primarygoal of rechristianizing the nation. Seventeen dioceses lacked bishops as the

22. Raguer, La espada y la cruz, pp. 214-215. For a detailed studyof the undergroundchurchinCatalonia, see Albert Manent i Segimon andJosep Ravent6s i Giralt, L'Esgleszaclandestinaa Catalunya durant la guerra civil, 1936-1939 (Barcelona, 1984).23. Taranc6n, Recuerdosdejuventud, pp. 244-247.24. Raz6n y Fe, no. 112 (1937), p. 6.25. Ignacio Menendez Reigada, Acerca de la guerra santa (Salamanca, 1938), p. 17; Ecclesia(1941), no. 7, p. 2.26. Thus provincial governors imposed fines on those accused of blasphemy, and the clergylaunched periodic campaigns to improve moral conduct. Teachers who had not shown asufficient degree of "morality and patriotism" were purged from the schools. Hermet, Lescatholiques dans l'Espagne franquiste, 2: 129; Lamadrid, "La ensefianza religiosa,"pp. 37-38.

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FRANCO'S "NEW SPAIN"war ended, in part because of the impasse that had occurred between thegovernment and ecclesiastical authorities over the former's role in episcopalappointments.27The church also faced a serious problem in reorganizing itsadministration in regions that had been under republican rule during thewar. The condition of the diocese of Tortosa provides an example. With anaged bishop living in Rome until after the conflict ended, the task ofreorganizing the diocese fell to the vicar-general, who dispatched smallgroups of priests in the wake of the nationalist armies. These priestsconcentrated their efforts on finding churches in suitable condition forservices and on securing clergy for the large number of parishes lackingincumbents. The latter was by no means easy, for many priests who hadsurvived the war in hiding had suffered "a horrible trauma" that made itdifficult for them to return to normal pastoral duties.28In Madrid, materialdevastation to churches was so great that the bishop established a specialvicarate of reorganization in 1939 to meet minimal pastoral needs.29The task of repairing extensive material damage in a country with aneconomy in near ruin proceeded slowly at first. A government decree ofMarch 1941 finally authorized state financing of rebuilding efforts. In Juneof the same year the regime created the National Junta for the Reconstructionof Churches to supervise reconstruction. The Junta financedthe rebuilding ofone hundred churches during its first year of operation.30Reconstruction tookfar longer than had been anticipated, however, although the pace varied fromdiocese to diocese. In Barcelona by 1943 more than 250 churches had beenrebuilt or repaired thanks to significant private donations. The situation inToledo, where rebuilding depended almost entirely on government assis-tance, proceeded more slowly. As late as 1950, many churches requiringrepair had not received it.31Yet for the most part the reconstructioncampaignlargely had fulfilled its goals by the early 1950s.Generous state financing of reconstruction allowed the church to derivesome pastoral benefits from the situation. For the first time in its modernhistory it was able to expand the number of churches in the cities and to carryout a limited parochial reorganization that took population size and parish

27. Hermet, Les catholiquesdans l'Espagnefranquiste, 2: 95, n. 2.28. Taranc6n, Recuerdosdejuventud, p. 249.29. Kodasver (pseud.), Medio siglo de vida diocesana matritense, 1913-1963 (Madrid, 1963),pp. 134-135.30. Ecclesia (1941), no. 40, pp. 5-6. The process of providing funds for reconstruction wasongoing. In 1943, for example, the government authorized a special loan of 40,000,000pesetas at a subsidized interest rate for this purpose. Ecclesia (1943), no. 81, p. 18.31. Santiago Petschen, La Iglesia en la Espafia de Franco (Madrid, 1977), pp. 59-60. Thepublic purse was not bottomless, however, as Franco made plain in a 1942 interview. Heindicated that the state expected the faithful to contribute generously to the rebuilding ofchurches. When asked if he had confidence in their generous instincts, he replied: "Oh yes!Charity is never exhausted." Ecclesia (1942), no. 28, p. 7.

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CHURCH HISTORYlocation into account.32 Recognizing that they had not developed an adequateparochial organization in working-class districts before the war, ecclesiasticalauthorities concentrated the construction of new churches in these areas.Between 1939 and 1941 seventeen new parishes, the majority in poor barrios,were built in Madrid. In Valencia the nearly universal destruction ofchurches allowed the archbishop to carry out a thorough parochial reorgani-zation which resulted in some parishes being closed, others transferred todistricts of greater need, and nine new parishes established in working-classareas. Moreover, the church went beyond the construction of churches andparish houses. Many working-class parishes provided medical dispensariesand a variety of social services.33In some dioceses it proved more difficult to resolve the problems created bythe loss of clergy during the war. In spite of a rush of late vocations after theclose of hostilities, the church had to struggle for years to provide sufficientpriests for parish work.34 Two years after the war ended, the Toledoarchdiocese still lacked priests for 147 parishes with a total population of115,256. The available clergy were spread thinly, especially in the country-side, where a single parish priest often served several villages at the sametime. Conditions in the diocese of Malaga continued to be desperate as late as1944. The entire diocese contained only 166 priests for a population of600,000; 52 of its 146 parishes lacked incumbents. The bishop estimated thathe required at least 200 more priests to meet minimal pastoral needs.35 Intime, the shortage of priests was remedied by the surge in seminaryenrollments first noted in the early 1940s. Still, the church never entirelymade up the losses suffered during the war, particularly among parishpriests.36

32. Prior to 1931 the church depended on government funds for the creation of new parishes.Neither the constitutional monarchy (1875-1923) nor the dictatorshipof General MiguelPrimo de Rivera (1923-1930) was preparedto providethe money necessary to increase thenumber of parishes in the growing cities. The result was that average population size in theparishes of Madrid and Barcelona was among the largest in Europe. Enrique Swoboda, Lacura de almas en las grandes ciudades,trans. Joaquin Moragues (Barcelona, 1921), p. 173.33. Ecclesia (1941), no. 8, p. 8; no. 14, pp. 13-14; no. 24, p. 7; (1944), no. 162, p. 21; no. 166,p. 11.34. Although frequently commentedupon by students of the churchin Franco'sSpain, the surgein late vocations did not mean any substantial increase in the number of adults seeking toenter seminaries. It referred in a technical sense to aspirants between fourteen andtwenty-five who were considered late vocations in comparison with the usual age ofseminary entrance of from ten to fourteen. Fernando Urbina, "Formas de vida de la Iglesiaen Espaiia: 1939-1975," in Eglesia y sociedad en Espaia, 1939-1975 (Madrid, 1977),p. 29.35. Ecclesia (1941), no. 14, pp. 13-14; (1944), no. 162, p. 21.36. In 1927, for example, the secular clergy numbered 32,002, priests in the religious orders,12,219. In 1967, prior to a dramatic fall in vocations, seculars numbered 25,906, priests inthe orders, 9,969. Anuario estadistico de Espaia, 1927 (Madrid, 1929), pp. 601-605; JesusMaria Vazquez, La Iglesia espaiola contemporanea(Madrid, 1967), p. 165.

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FRANCO'S "NEW SPAIN"The repair of material damage and the recruitment of new clericalpersonnel presented problems in the years immediately following the end ofthe war. Such problems paled into insignificance, though, before the objectivethe church had set for itself of rechristianizing the nation. The clergyexpected that the social, educational, and cultural controls bestowed on it bythe Franco regime would play an important role in this process. But thechurch also sought to achieve its goal through pastoral means. There was,however, little innovative or imaginative about the methods employed.Bishops and priests continued to emphasize, as they always had, "theteaching of the catechism to adults, the fulfillment of the Easter communionobligation, practice of the Stations of the Cross, the preparation of firstcommunions and the organization of missions or spiritual exercises."37Clergy viewed with satisfaction the enormous participation in the religiousceremonies which they organized indefatigably in the post-war years. Itshould be noted, however, that many of these collective manifestations of

religious sentiment also had a distinctly political character that celebrated thetriumph of the church over its enemies. Participants in the 1939 CorpusChristi procession in Madrid intoned hymns, but they also sang the anthemsof the Falange, the quasi-fascist party of the regime, and gave "constant vivasto Christ the King, the Spanish army and its unconquerable Caudillo." TheCatholic press repeatedly boasted of the mingling of religion and patriotismin church ceremonies, proclaiming "one Caudillo, one faith, and advance inthe name of God and eternal Spain."38Of the pastoral initiatives undertaken by the church, none was moreambitious than the vast campaign of popular missions organized throughoutthe country, particularly in 1941 and 1942. The church, of course, hademployed the mission as an instrument of popular evangelization since theCouncil of Trent. However, the missions of the post-war period differedsubstantially from their predecessors.The church broke with the traditionalpattern of structuring the mission around parish churches in favor of amassive organizational framework embracing entire cities. Over 500 priestsdrawn from the religious orders, for example, preached in 200 churches,rented halls, and factories during the great Barcelona mission of 1941, whilethe Seville mission of the same year employed more than 200 priests.Organizers of the missions conducted elaborate public relations campaignsdesigned to attract the public. At Vigo in 1942, using funds donated by themunicipal and provincial governments,banks, and business firms, organizersplaced announcements in all store windows and illuminated crosses on thecity's streetcars.Thirty cyclists in La Coruinadistributed leaflets through the

37. Ecclesia (1943), no. 89, p. 19.38. Ya, 9 June 1939; 7 February 1940.

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CHURCH HISTORYtown. In Salamanca, youths distributed 30,000 leaflets "recalling eternaltruths" to the population.39Unlike earlier missions, those of the post-war period were organized toserve various functional constituencies. Thus, at Vigo more than 20,000people attended the customary "general" mission in parish churches. Butseparate centers served school children (12,000), secondary school students(3,000), military personnel (2,700), municipal employees (150), dressmakersand female servants (1,700), factory workers (4,000), transport workers(1,000), newspaper employees (200), and jail inmates (450). The great publicceremonies held at various times during a mission were designed to impressand inspire. The Vigo mission opened with a procession of 45,000 faithful ledthrough the streets by priests carrying crosses aloft and accompanied byrepresentatives of Catholic associations bearing their standards. A "rosary ofthe sea" attracted a crowd of 80,000 to watch a flotilla of twenty-four boatsescort a vessel carrying a statue of the Virgin. Priests using loudspeakers thenrecited the rosary for the thousands gathered on the harbor's shore.40Thousands of confessions and communions recorded during the missionsseemed to offer firm evidence to the clergy of a religious revival. Moreover,the church believed that the missions at last had succeeded in moderating thetraditional alienation of the working class. It was reported that missionarypreachers in poor districts of Barcelona were received "with emotion andenthusiasm" by the people and that "surprising cases of conversion" hadtaken place. The clergy saw the thousands of couples who sought canonicalmarriage, 45,000 in Seville alone, as an indication of "sincere repentance" onthe part of those who had married in civil ceremonies during the Republic.41That the missions were impressive for their size and organization isevident. Indeed, they were unique in the history of modern SpanishCatholicism. Whether they indicated the existence of a religious revival is lesscertain. From a pastoral perspective, missions always have appeared to sufferfrom the weakness of arousing religious sentiment that is short-lived.Moreover, an element of social and political compulsion was present in thegreat missions of 1941 and 1942. Factory workers in Vigo, for example,received time off from their employers to attend. Few would have dared toabsent themselves from the services given the social and political climate ofthe times.

Some critics within the church expressed doubts about claims of a religiousrevival. Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer, whose moderation had earned him the

39. "Santas misiones en Barcelona y Sevilla," Ecclesia (1941), no. 7, pp. 8-9; "Santa misi6n deVigo por Padres de la Compafiia de Jesus," Sal Terrae 30 (1942): 402; "Santa misi6n de laCorufia," ibid., p. 302. "Misiones generales en Salamanca," Boletin oficial del obispadodeSalamanca (1940), p. 125.40. "Santa misi6n de Vigo," pp. 403-405.41. "Santas misiones en Barcelona y Sevilla," p. 8.

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FRANCO'S "NEW SPAIN"hostility of Franco, believed that the "external manifestations of the cult" thathad multiplied in nationalist Spain were less "a religious manifestation" thana political reaction against the "persecuting laicism" of the Republic.42Although it is impossible to know the motives of the thousands whoparticipated in religious ceremonies in the post-war years, there are solidgrounds for accepting Vidal i Barraquer's judgment. The intense emotions,already aroused by conflicts during the Republic and heightened by the war,created a mood of militant exaltation among the clergy and lay activists whoproclaimed their commitment to a "victorious Christianity."43This militant activism found its strongest expression in the Catholic Actionmovement. A lay organization operating under episcopal authority, CatholicAction played an important role in resisting anticlerical legislation during theRepublic. The war exacted a heavy toll, however, as a result of executions inthe republican zone and of battle casualties. In 1939 a reorganized movementbegan a period of expansion and renewed activity. Membership in theprovince of Zaragoza tripled between 1938 and 1940. In the nation as awhole, the number of members increased from 41,000 on the eve of the war tomore than 100,000 by 1941.44 Members of Catholic Action achieved signifi-cant political influence in the regime. But it is sometimes forgotten that theyalso contributed to the rechristianizing campaigns organized after the warduring that period of reduced clerical numbers. In Seville, for instance, morethan a thousand young women from the movement circulated through thedechristianized countryside in an ambitious program of religious educationlaunched in 1943.45

In spite of its activity and its increased size after the war, Catholic Actionremained what it always had been: a vaguely elitist organization with anoverwhelmingly middle-class membership. In many respects it mirrored thecondition of Spanish Catholicism, "whose adherents, nearly completelybourgeois, [and] with the war recently won, had to confront the fact thatmuch of the country lived outside Catholicism."46 Insofar as it is possible torefer to a religious revival immediately after the war, it took place among thatpart of the population that long had been loyal to the church.The objective of attracting the urban working class to the church provedmore difficult, in spite of the resources, both material and pastoral, committedto this effort. On the one hand, the ecclesiastical authorities took heart fromreports of progress such as that made by the parish priest of Chamartin in42. Ramon Muntanyola, Vidal i Barraquer: el cardenal de la paz, 2d ed. (Barcelona, 1974),p. 422.43. Miguel Benzo Mestre, "Tres etapas de la Acci6n Cat6lica espanola," Ecclesia (1964), no. 1,p. 185.44. Ibid. (1941), no. 9, p. 11; no. 21, p. 11.45. Ibid. (1943), no. 124, p. 21.46. Jose Maria Escudero, "La eficacia del catolicismoespafiol," in Catolicismoespahol: aspectosactuales (Madrid, 1955), p. 113.

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CHURCH HISTORYMadrid. When he took up his charge in 1940, the local population receivedhim with "glacial coldness." But within two years the number of residentsfulfilling the Easter communion obligation rose from 16.6 percent to 41percent. On the other hand, there were indications that it would be far fromeasy to break the historic pattern of working-class alienation from the church.In 1941 the Madrid parish of San Ramon in Vallecas reported that therewere still 10,000 unbaptized children within its limits. Only 5,000 of theparish's 90,000 residents attended Sunday mass, and the vast majority ofcouples married in the parish church could neither make the sign of the crossnor recite the "Our Father."47

An assessment of the religious condition of any country presents method-ological and interpretative problems; in the case of Spain, these are particu-larly acute. The introduction of the religious sociology associated withGabriel Le Bras into Spain during the 1950s provided for the first timereasonable, if incomplete, statistics on observance. On the basis of theresearch carried out thus far, one must conclude that there is little evidence tosuggest that the church succeeded in breaking the historic pattern of religiousindifference among urban industrial workers, although some ameliorationhas taken place. Rogelio Duocastella's statistics for the industrial town ofMataro show that reception of the last sacraments (one indicator of religiosityused by religious sociologists) fell from 53.1 percent in 1900 to 32.3 percentby 1940, but then increased to 57.5 percent in 1945 before slipping to 48.2percent in 1955. The Fundacion Foessa sociological survey of 1970, in whichit was reported that approximately one-third of the respondents in thecategory of workers-employees practiced their religion on a regular basis,suggests that the church managed to recover some lost ground during the fortyyears of the Franco regime.48 Yet there are reasons for believing that thesurvey's authors were optimistic in their assessment as well as imprecise intheir categories. In a 1958 survey of some 15,000 industrial workers, it wasfound that only 7.6 percent attended Sunday mass; 28.5 percent fulfilled theirEaster duty, although 86.1 percent had been baptized, had married in thechurch, and desired a Christian burial.49 These mixed signals suggest a complexpattern of belief and practice that differs from the simple model of christiani-zation-dechristianization employed by social commentators for the periodbefore the civil war. It is at least clear that at the level of formal observancethe church experienced only limited success, in spite of the powerfulinstruments of social control in its hands during the Franco years.The situation in southern Spain offered fewer hopeful signs. In 1941,

47. La parroquia de Chamartin en los suburbios madrilefios," Ecclesia (1942), no. 29, p. 9;no. 8, p. 8.48. Duocastella, Matar6: 1955, p. 290; Amando de Miguel et al., Informe sociolbgicosobre lasituacion social de Espaiia (Madrid, 1972), p. 106.49. Alfredo C. Comin, Espaia, ,pais de misi6n? (Barcelona, 1966), p. 80.

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FRANCO'S "NEW SPAIN"6,671 of the 44,000 residents of Jaen attended Sunday mass. The situationwas considerably worse in smaller towns of the province, such as Alcala laReal, where only 1,700 of the town's population of 30,000 attendedmass on aregular basis. There is little indication that the church improved its fortunesover time. A 1961 report lamented the "distressing aspect"of the rural townsof Andalusia, where few residents participated in religious activities.50Andthe most recent survey of observance in the south (1985) records uniformlylow attendance at Sunday mass in most of the southern dioceses: Almeria,17.80 percent; Cadiz, 15.57 percent; Jaen, 24.83 percent; Seville, 16.73percent;and so on.51These statistics say little, of course, about the quality of religious life or thedegree of religious commitment among the population, both observant andnonobservant.They do indicate, however, that the militant Catholic activismthat developed during the 1930s and continued through the early Francoyears did not recreatein modern guise that Catholic Spain of the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries so enthusiastically evoked by apologists of Franco's "NewSpain." By the mid-1950s, confidence in what historians have come to callSpanish National Catholicism began to ebb within the church. The historicconditions that had given twentieth-century Catholicism in Spain a distinc-tive character slowly changed, bringing a new mood of self-criticism, thechanges introducedby the Second Vatican Council, and the transformationofsociety itself under the impact of massive economic change. Only then couldthe church set aside its goal of rechristianizing the nation through compulsionin favor of new initiatives which made it, in 1975 at Franco's death, a verydifferent institution from the one that for decades had supported the regime sostrongly.50. Segundo Congresode misionespopulares (Madrid, 1961), p. 199.51. Secretariado Nacional de Liturgia, Asistencia a la misa dominical (Madrid, 1985), table 4.

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