Tortilla Fiat

Tortilla Fiat FOR six years, Roman Catholic Priest Victor Salandini, now 43, has been a passionate promoter of Cesar Chavez's efforts to organize California farm workers. Lately, wearing a serape with Chavez's stylized eagle emblazoned on it, Salandini has been saying Mass on an ironing board in front of the Palm City house of Grower Robert Egger, a key figure in a farm labor dispute. He has refused repeated orders of San Diego Bishop Leo T. Maher to wear vestments other than the serape, and to stop using corn tortillas as Communion bread. (Wheat tortillas would apparently be acceptable under recently authorized changes in the Mass.) Maher, who has backed workers' rights to organize but pledged church neutrality in the conflict, said last month that Salandini was a man "under terrific tension" with "a grave persecution complex." Last week Maher ordered Salandini suspended. The tortillas, evidently, were too much to swallow.

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