Field Mass for Basque Army Soldiers

This photograph shows a mass being celebrated at the front for the soldiers of the Otxandiano battalion of the army created by the government of the Basque Country. We see Basque Nationalist soldiers practicing their religion led by Basque priests serving as chaplains, testimony to the unique situation of religion in the Basque Country during the Civil War. There the military uprising provoked deep divisions within the Church and Catholic political forces. Unlike the rest of Spain, where the Church blessed the rebels and called their rebellion a Crusade, the Basque Church experienced a deep rupture. The sector of the clergy that identified politically with the Spanish national right seconded the position of the Spanish hierarchy while the sector close to Basque nationalism refused to support the rebels. There were also some clergy who refused to support either side and tried to remain neutral. The horrors of the war dramatically deepened the divisions at the heart of the Basque Church. The Civil War in the Basque Country was also a war among Catholics. 

In Euskadi, which remained loyal to the Republic and which, since October 1936 had an autonomous regional government led by the Catholic Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), religious life continued as it had before 18 July. While the rest of Republican Spain experienced an explosion of anticlerical violence, in the Basque Country there was no systematic attack on the Catholic Church. As a result, Euskadi became a refuge for priests fleeing the anticlerical violence  in regions such as Asturias and Santander. 

The Francoist victory brought intense repression directed against the sector of the clergy considered “hostile to the National Movement”. Pressure from the rebel National Defence Junta forced the Bishop of Vitoria, Mateo Múgica, who they considered too tolerant of Basque nationalist Catholics, to leave Spain in October 1936. The rebels also executed sixteen priests in Gipuzkoa for being “separatists”. Although Cardinal Gomá’s lobbying with Franco prevented further executions, the purging of the Basque clergy continued. Around one hundred priests faced military courts, many of whom were sentenced to years in prison. Hundreds were banished from the Basque Country and many others, fearing Francoist repression, fled into exile. 

After the expulsion of Bishop Múgica, the new leaders of the diocese, first the vicar general José A. Pérez Ormazabal and then, from September 1937 until 1943, the apostolic administrator Javier Lauzurica, worked to incorporate the Basque Church into the National Movement. They also collaborated with Franco’s “New State” in repressing “disaffected” clergy. In the Basque Country, the Civil War had created a Church of victors and vanquished. 

FMR/ UB/ MJV