Monday, Mar. 15, 1926
Nun
When the Mexican Government, that harsh organization, sent the foreign Roman Catholic priesthood packing from the country (TIME, Feb. 6, LATIN AMERICA), a very old nun from a convent in Mexico City took ship for Manhattan. She arrived last week--Lorenza Rivarez, Mother Superior of the Order of St. Theresa--the first of the expelled believers to tell what scenes of abomination have been enacted in nunneries and churches. Misfortune had made her shy; her rapid, sorrowful words clicked like beads, pattered like rain; a Chancine priest translated the Spanish into French; a reporter put the French into English:
"It has been a very sad thing ... to see the nuns driven out and the convent looted. . . . Thirty years ago I founded my convent; what is there left for me? . . . We taught the young girls to do good works among the poor; I had 200 under my rule. . . . No one can imagine the horrors that have befallen our Church. It has been a very sad thing. . . . Father Victor Fabre was wounded in the neck. For a week he was in prison, then in a hole with pigs on a ship. . . . There are good people in Mexico, holy and devout. They pray for the intervention of your government. . . . But I am too old; I have spent my life. . . . What is there left for me? I will retire into the convent in Barcelona. It has been a very sad thing."