The Hemisphere: The Ravished Churches

Women wept, and children stared around them wide-eyed. Last week at the first services police allowed in Buenos Aires' burned-out churches. Argentine Roman Catholics saw the full extent of the damage. Inside blackened shells they found looted poor boxes, shattered statues and altars, toppled altar rails. They knelt to pray in mounds of ashes.

The churches—nine in all—were set afire the night of the June 16 revolt against Juan Perón. The damage was not the work of rioting mobs (or of Communists, as Perón said) but rather of methodical arsonists. At the 233-year-old Church of San Ignacio, a terrified caretaker...

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