SPAIN: The Bishop and The Basques

The Vatican and the Roman Catholic government of Spain confronted one another last week in the country's most ominous church-state clash in more than 40 years. The regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco was seeking to expel the Bishop of Bilbao, Antonio Añoveros Ataun, 64, for statements that sharply opposed government policy. Madrid even hinted that it might break the 1953 concordat that protects Catholicism's legal position as Spain's state religion. In response, churchmen warned that any official—presumably including Premier Carlos Arias Navarro and even the pious Caudillo himself—who moved against the bishop...