Serene Rebel, Severe President

Jumpiness and severity toward Roman Catholics was again last week the mood of President Emilio Fortes Gil of Mexico, who mortally hates and fears Pope Pius XI, because he thinks that the locomotive and two cars of his Presidential train were dynamited by Roman Catholics (TIME, Feb. 18).

With a lowering scowl and a menacing jut of his heavy jaw, the Senor President indicated to correspondents his intense displeasure at a statement issued, last week, from a secret hiding place, by the Bishop of San Luis Potosi, now spokesman for the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in Mexico. Opening with a reference to the writer's "serenity" and "calmness," this epistle denied that the Episcopate or clergy had had any part in the recent "excesses" (dynamitings), and went on to announce that priests who obey the Government's decree requiring them to register their names and addresses (TIME, Feb. 25) "do not commit a sin ... by subjecting themselves to this humiliation . . . but if they do so it must be as a result of their own decision. . . . The government has promised not to abuse its knowledge of the priests' residences, but it must be remembered that there are elements in the Government, radical in the extreme."

Within 24 hours editors of Mexican dailies who printed the Bishop's statement were threatened by officials with "energetic punishment" should they commit another such offense; and the Government released a press communique declaring that "in the fictitious, measured tone . . . of Senor Miguel M. de la Mora who calls himself Bishop of San Luis Potosi . . . there prevails the spirit of frank rebellion. . . .

"The government considers that Senor de la Mora is in open rebellion, since the place in which he keeps himself is not even known, and that he is one of the probable directors of the armed movement of Catholic fanatics in the State of Jalisco."

Thus the official spokesman of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in Mexico is now a rebel by official proclamation. From last week forward may be said to date Mexico's new "Holy War."