Blow to the Bishops

The three Roman Catholic bishops of Puerto Rico got a stinging lesson: Puerto Rican voters hold to the mainland U.S. view on separation of church and state. Though 90% Catholic, and warned by a pair of pastoral letters that supporting Governor Luis Munoz Marin's Popular Democrats could lead to excommunication (TIME. Nov. 7), the voters gave well-liked Munoz Marin 58% of the vote and a fourth straight term as Governor. Statehood Republican Candidate Luis Ferre trailed with 250,000 votes to 456,000 for Munoz Marin. The church-backed Christian Action Party, on its first try for office, got only 51,000 votes--less than the 10% needed to remain a registered political party. Munoz Marin, a shrewd old campaigner who aroused church ire by his approval of government birth-control programs, admitted that he might not have done so well if the church-state issue had not injected "dramatic pace" into the campaign.

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