Immaculate Nun

A nun named after the Most Blessed Conception of the Virgin Mary continued the focus of Mexican news last week. She had been besmirched (TIME, Sept. 3). A youth and a girl had confessed that she was the "master mind" of a group of Roman Catholics who finally persuaded a fanatic to assassinate President-elect Alvaro Obregon (TIME, July 30). In the face of such testimony Mother Superior Concepcion remained calm and demanded to be faced by her accusers last week.

"Do not invent lies, Eulogio Gonzales," she said to the youth who had informed against her. "Tell the truth, Eulogio, even though it cost you your life."*

"W-w-well ..." stammered Eulogio Gonzales, "whatever Mother Concepcion says is truth." And he proceeded to retract completely.

The girl was next brought in. She, pretty Maria Elena Manzano, 21, had previously confessed that Mother Concepcion told her to dance with General Obregon and prick him with a poisoned lancet. Further she stated that she had been upbraided by Mother Concepcion for losing her nerve and failing to prick.

"What are these lies you have told about me?" asked Mother Superior Concepcion.

"I ... I was so nervous the day they questioned me. I don't know what I said!" And pretty Maria Elena Manzano sobbingly retracted.

Since a cloud of witnesses testified (without retraction) that the convent presided over by Mother Superior Concepcion was a rendezvous for so-called "Catholic plotters," the examining official "said sharply to her:

"It seems very strange to me that you should receive so many plotters and not know what they talked about."

"I never even asked who they were," responded Mother Concepcion, "half the people of Mexico came, to attend religious services."

Though these developments convinced many persons of the immaculate innocence of Mother Concepcion, they comprised a mere incident in the broad and sweeping criminal investigation now being conducted by Mexico City's new Chief of Police, General Antonio Rios Zertuche. The General, an intimate and brother-in-arms of General Obregon is determined, perhaps too determined, to find out that the assassin, one Jose de Leon Toral, an insignificant Roman Catholic fanatic, was not the sole author of the crime as he still insists that he was.

*She did not say "my life," though it was she, not he, who was in physical danger.