Church & State Again

The familiar issue of church and state relationships, the immediate cause of Juan Peron's downfall, touched off raucous student demonstrations in Argentina last week.

At the heart of the dispute was the stubborn fact that President Pedro Aramburu's acts and attitudes toward the Roman Catholic Church pleased almost no one. The proclerical wing of Argentine opinion, which threw its considerable weight against Peron only after he had imprudently attacked the church, felt defrauded: Aramburu did not restore the church's prerogatives, such as religious education in public schools. So heated have ardent Roman Catholics become that one priest recently cried: "Never has there been such a rift between the church and the government as now!"

Anticlericals, many of whom opposed Peron during the long years of his good relations with the church, felt equally cheated: Aramburu's Education Minister was a noted Roman Catholic layman, Atilio Dell'Oro Maini. Dell'Oro proposed nothing more ominous than authorizing any group of citizens to organize a university--a right hitherto reserved to the state--but anticlericals professed to see in the move an opening for the Vatican to build Catholic universities that would dominate Argentine higher education. They demanded Dell'Oro's scalp.

With the approach of the new school term a fortnight ago, both sides decided to battle the issue out. Fiery, fight-happy students served as troops; they fought for the occupation of school buildings in Buenos Aires, La Plata, Rosario, Cordoba and other cities. Winning forces locked themselves inside. Other students, 6,000 strong, clashed and rioted in front of the presidential palace, using tear-gas bombs made by chemistry students as weapons. The weight of numbers favored the anticlericals. At length Aramburu accepted Dell'Oro's resignation (offered by telephone from Lima, where Dell'Oro had just been elected president of an inter-American conference of education ministers).

In replacement, Aramburu appointed Carlos Adrogue, a longtime anti-Peronista who tries to go down the middle of the road on the religious issue. Loud cries of Roman Catholic resentment at Dell'Oro's ousting suggested that the President had by no means settled the problem. But all Argentines took smiling satisfaction in the fact that opposing factions could dispute and demonstrate freely on a vital public issue without fear of Peron-style oppression. Even ex-Minister Dell'Oro said: "I'm proud of the free debates going on at this moment over this case."

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