Not long ago the Peruvian regime, taking action against the terrorists, arrested many Communists, including the former priest, Salomon Bolo Hidalgo. Father Bolo is an old and perhaps worn-out cog in the Communist apparatus. He has been excommunicated, but that doesn’t stop him from posing in public as a man of the cloth. He dons the cowl which he is forbidden to wear, and mounts the platform to deliver fiery Communist speeches. For the Peruvian Communists he represents a great activist, because through him they can exploit the traditional influence of the Church upon the masses. His audiences are preponderantly primitive folk, most of them illiterate, who judge on the basis of external appearances and are little given to seek an ulterior motive behind words and acts. When a man of God stands up and tells them of revolution and the blessings of Communism, he has a very special impact: “If a padre is for it, it can’t be all bad.” So the Communists don’t want to give up Father Bolo’s clerical raiment, and care is taken that he not attack the Church directly—for that clash in itself might awaken the suspicions of a simple public.
‘Thorny Young Men?
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