The Clergy Continue to Fight

Following World War II, the clergy in the eastern part of Czechoslovakia continued to instigate persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses. During the time of Nazi domination, they had charged that the Witnesses were Communists; now they claimed that the Witnesses were against the Communist government. At times, when Jehovah’s Witnesses were making calls at the homes of the people, the priests urged teachers to let hundreds of children out of school to throw stones at the Witnesses.

Similarly, Catholic priests in Santa Ana, El Salvador, agitated against the Witnesses in 1947. While the brothers were having their weekly Watchtower Study, boys threw stones through the open door. Then came the procession led by priests. Some carried torches; others carried images. “Long live the Virgin!” they shouted. “May Jehovah die!” For some two hours, the building was pelted with stones.

In the mid-1940’s, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Quebec, Canada, were also subjected to horrible abuse, at the hands of Catholic mobs and officials alike. Delegations from the bishop’s palace called daily at the police department to demand that the police get rid of the Witnesses. Frequently, before an arrest was made, the police were seen emerging from the back door of the church. In 1949, missionaries of Jehovah’s Witnesses were driven out of Joliette, Quebec, by Catholic mobsters.

In Sucre, Bolivia, there was more violence. At the time of an assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1955, a gang of boys from the Sacred Heart Catholic School surrounded the assembly place, yelled, and threw stones. From the church building across the street, a powerful loudspeaker urged all Catholics to defend the church and the “Virgin” against the “Protestant heretics.” The bishop and the priests personally tried to disrupt the meeting but were ordered out of the hall by the police.

The previous year, when Jehovah’s Witnesses were holding an assembly in Riobamba, Ecuador, their program featured a public talk entitled “Love, Practical in a Selfish World?” But a Jesuit priest had stirred up the Catholic populace, urging them to prevent that meeting. Thus, as the talk got under way, a mob could be heard shouting: “Long live the Catholic Church!” and, “Down with the Protestants!” The police commendably held them back, with swords drawn. But the mob hurled stones at the meeting place and, later, at the building in which the missionaries lived.

The Roman Catholic clergy have been in the forefront of the persecution, but they have not been the only ones. The Greek Orthodox clergy have been just as fierce and have used the same tactics, in their more limited area of influence. In addition, where they felt that they could do it, many of the Protestant clergy have demonstrated a similar spirit. For example, in Indonesia they have led mobs that broke up Bible studies in private homes and that savagely beat Jehovah’s Witnesses who were present.