"Our country is suffering a profound disturbance; it is not only an extremely cruel civil war that fills us with tribulation, but also a tremendous commotion that shakes the very connections of our society and has even endangered our existence as a nation... It is a fact, proved by extensive documentation, that the thinking of a large part of foreign opinion is out of touch with the reality of events in our country... Since God has willed that it should be our country that will serve as a place for testing the ideas and processes that aspire to conquer the world, we want the damage to be reduced to our country alone, saving the rest of the nations from ruin... The war in Spain is the product of the conflict between irreconcilable ideologies; in its very origins one finds very grave questions of a moral and legal, of a religious and historical order... When the war broke out, we lamented that painful fact more than anyone, because it is always an extremely serious evil... and because our mission is one of reconciliation and peace... The Church did not want and did not seek this war, and we do not consider it necessary to justify it against the charges of belligerence that foreign periodicals have leveled at the Church in Spain. It is true that thousands of her children, obeying the dictates of conscience and patriotism, and on their own personal responsibility, rose up in arms to save the principles of Christian religion and justice that have for centuries informed the life of the nation; but whoever accuses it of having provoked this war or of having conspired to start it, or even of not having done everything in its power to avoid it, ignores or falsifies reality... The Church has been the principal victim of the fury of one of the contending parties, and it has not ceased to work with its prayers, its exhortations, and its influence to lessen the damage and shorten the ordeal..."