MEXICO: Orizaba Martyr

Mexico's able young President Lázaro Cárdenas is an Old Revolutionary who would like to get the Revolution settled down on an even keel, with a minimum of bad feeling and bloodshed. To that end he last week proclaimed an amnesty for 10,000 exiles who have been convicted of some 4,000 crimes against the Revolution since 1920, invited them to get back into Mexico and behave. Many were dead; others, like Dictator Porfirio Diaz' son Felix, are back already. The invitation did not include ex-Boss Plutarco Elias Calles, now sojourning in California, who was never charged with a specific, forgivable crime. Just as good feeling began to run high an incident in Orizaba, State of Veracruz, made President Cárdenas jumpier than ever.

It is no secret that the President would like very much to have Mexico's States modify their severe anti-Catholic laws which keep that great Church hamstrung. Chihuahua permits only one priest in the entire State; Veracruz one for each 100,000 of population. Both forbid religious services entirely but services are always going on. One morning last week in Orizaba, police, acting on undetermined authority, surrounded a house where Father José María Flores was illegally celebrating Mass. As his congregation of 58 women and four men began to leave, the police opened fire. Down dropped 14-year-old Leonor Sanchez and Orizaba's Catholics had a martyr.

That news spread so fast through Veracruz that the next afternoon found 15,000 Catholics swarming menacingly in Orizaba, routing guards and forcing their way into the city's 14 closed churches, frantically ringing bells that had been silent for a decade. Hastily the city authorities canceled a Mardi Gras celebration that would have brought thousands more Catholics into town. Veracruz's youthful new Governor Miguel Alemán was so besieged during a visit to the Orizaba city hall that he slipped out a side door and made for nearby Córdoba. Apparently to stall for time, State spokesmen falsely reported that the Legislature was willing to let the opened churches stay open. When Governor Alemán cracked out a denial of this, President Cárdenas ordered his Department of the Interior to investigate the entire affair. Upshot seemed to be that although it was still illegal to celebrate Mass in Veracruz, more Masses were being held there than at any time for years.