Trouble for the Cardinal

It is hard to be too conservative as a churchman in Spain, but Seville's Pedro Cardinal Segura y Saenz has managed it. He has lambasted Dictator Franco for being too nice to Protestants and for allowing the Falange to be too "anticlerical," he has looked nostalgically back at the Inquisition, has damned and damped down such pleasures as movies and dances in his archdiocese of Seville.

Four months ago the Vatican moved against Cardinal Segura. appointed an archbishop coadjutor with equal rights and functions plus the right of succession. Last week the 74-year-old prelate suffered another setback. The Vatican authorized publication of a message from its Papal Nuncio in Spain, Archbishop Ildebrando Antoniutti, congratulating the Chapter of the Seville Cathedral for condemning a recent leaflet campaign, "directed against the Pope, the Holy See, the Nuncio, and the Archbishop Coadjutor by means of writings widely distributed from Seville throughout Spain." The leaflets (one title: Segura, Martyr of Truth), attacked the Cardinal's "enemies" and were reportedly approved by Segura himself. Said the Nuncio: "Put an end to the mutterings, maledictions and calumnies . . . May the pen break of those who write anonymous documents . . ."

In Seville, an official inquiry began into the authorship and origin of the pamphlets. At week's end, hard-pressed old Cardinal Segura was quoted: "Not even the Civil Guards will get me out of my diocese."*

Rome's Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith last week announced the excommunication, three years ago, of Monsignor Li Wei-Kwang, onetime Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Nanking. His offense: "Acting by word and deed against the legitimate authority of the representative of the Supreme Pontiff in China." The excommunication was not published until now, in hopes that the erring priest might mend his ways. Instead, according to Osservatore Romano, Li has recently become "leader and proclaimer among Christians of movements that have the purpose of dividing Catholics and changing the essence of the only church of Christ." In other words, Li Wei-Kwang is helping to set up the Communists' bogus "Catholic Church" in China, similar to the "independent Catholic" churches in European Iron Curtain countries. Rumored in the offing: election of a fake Chinese "Pope."

*Only for a transgression in faith or morals would the Pope remove an archbishop.

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