Covenanter Witness Vol. 54 - Rparchives.org

understand,"
private."
Persecution in Colombia
But It Still Goes On
Man's inhumanity to man is a very old story,
and there is no sign yet that it is coming to an end.
It is a strange thing, this urge to hurt others, and it
is strangest of all when it is done in the name of
religion. There is a poem of Yeats, each verse of
with the line "The world's more
which ends up
full of weeping than you can
and in
deed a thing of the sort takes some understanding.
"Just the art of being kind, is all this sad world
needs,"
says a minor poetess, but what she says is of
first importance all the same. It is to be noted that
at the recent canonisation of Pius X there was pres
ent a special mission from Colombia, and it is to be
hoped that at some auspicious moment, someone
from one of the other missions, or someone even
higher up who can speak for the Roman Catholic
Church, has been able to convey to the Colombians
that it is about time the persecution of Protestants
still going
on in their countrv were stopped. A word,
an honest word, would do it; and it must be plain
to many that this kind of thing is bound to do their
Church a great deal of harm.
Silence
So far as I know, and I have been watching for
it, there has been no answer to that appeal. Yet what
a difference it would make if there were one ! If the
Pope said that there must be no persecution of the
Church in Poland, in Russia, or anywhere else, and
therefore persecution must cease in Colombia, that
change would redound to the glory of his Church,
and would bring hope to a world where hope is not
too plentiful. It would indicate a change of heart in
a Church which has made persecution all too often
a main instrument in its policy, and which has cer
not repudiated that instrument. And even if
tainly
nothing came of the appeal, it would be a great thing
that it should have been made. But something surely
was bound to happen, for though it is the secular
government which is doing this thing, the impelling
power behind it all is that of certain elements in
the Roman Catholic clergy. But if Rome spoke, the
whole bad business would be finished. For surely
even men who have grown hardened in persecution
would pay heed to their master's voice
This is How
The Protestant Church has been at work in
Colombia for nearly a century. It had its difficulties,
but till some years ago no organized opposition. Then
it started, and within six years fifty-three Prot
estants have been martyred, forty-three churches
and chapels destroyed, and one hundred and sixteen
primary schools closed. All this has happened in spite
of the fact that in 1948, at the ninth Conference of
American States, which met in Bogota, Colombia,
there was approved by the Conference an American
Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. This
Declaration Colombia approved and signed,
and this
is what the third article affirms: "Every person has
the right freely to profess a religious faith, and to
manifest and practice it both in public and
About the meaning of that there can be no doubt
whatever. There can be no excuse, then, for starting
a particularly cruel persecution in the very year
when it is signed. Twice last year the new President
has been urged to restore religious liberty, and a
masterly silence has been all the answer. But there
has been issued a new series of orders which have
as their object to suppress Protestantism and to re
strict religious liberty still further.
Another Appeal
Early in April of last year another appeal was
issued, this time to the man whose word can be final
and decisive for the Church. In other words, it was
made to the Pope himself. Now Pope Pius XII is a
great talker, and he has made many very moving
speeches pointing
out that there are lands where
the Church of Rome is under oppression, and that
this should not be. He asks for freedom for the
Roman Church, and claims or asks that all sorts and
conditions of men should co-operate in seeing that
it gets it. That is his claim ; and the appeal asks him
to use his influence to secure the same freedom for
the persecuted Protestants of Colombia.
Items
When you read of a persecution, and are given
a list of figures to show you the extent of it, it is
sometimes difficult to take in what is happening.
But when a concrete example is given, one begins
to realize the pity and horror of it. Here is one from
a missionary in Colombia. It concerns a "shoeshine
boy"
called Carlos Julio Tovar, of Cucuta in Colombia.
"He was an orphan and a street urchin . . .
cross-eyed,
buck-toothed and filthy." He began to come to
church, and sat in the front pew. The minister was
embarrassed and apprehensive, for he did not know
what it meant. But in a little the boy was giving
tracts to those whose shoes he polished, and for
that he was put in prison. The minister bailed him
out, and on the 17th August 1950 he was baptized
along with another shoeshine boy, who was his first
convert. Both had taken baths and donned clean
THE COVENANTER WITNESS
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Walter McCarroll. D.D.
Remo I. Robb. D.I>.
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