It’s not a genuine apology’: Spanish women reject Catholic attempt to redress Franco incarceration; The Guardian, June 15, 2025

Ashifa Kassam , The Guardian; It’s not a genuine apology’: Spanish women reject Catholic attempt to redress Franco incarceration

"As the members of the Catholic organisation wrapped up their speech with an appeal for forgiveness, the auditorium in Madrid exploded in rage. For decades, many in the audience had grappled with the scars left by their time in Catholic-run institutions; now they were on their feet chanting: “Truth, justice and reparations” and – laying bare their rejection of any apology – “Neither forget, nor forgive”.

It was an unprecedented response to an unprecedented moment in Spain, hinting at the deep fissures that linger over one of the longest-running and least-known institutions of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship: the Catholic-run centres that incarcerated thousands of women and girls as young as eight, subjecting them to barbaric punishments, forced labour and religious indoctrination.

The centres operated under the direction of the Women’s Protection Board, a state-run institution revived in 1941 and helmed by Franco’s wife, Carmen Polo. They aimed to rehabilitate “fallen women”, aged 15 to 25, as well as others deemed to be at risk of deviating from the narrow path marked out for women during the dictatorship.

Survivors, however, describe a reality that was far more brutal. “It was the greatest atrocity Spain has committed against women,” said Consuelo García del Cid, who was drugged by a doctor at her home in Barcelona and taken to a centre in Madrid at the age of 16."

A GOP operative accused a monastery of voter fraud. Nuns fought back.; The Washington Post, October 23, 2024

 Praveena Somasundaram, The Washington Post; A GOP operative accused a monastery of voter fraud. Nuns fought back.

"The day before, a Republican operative in the battleground state falsely suggested to his nearly 58,000 followers on X that no one lived at the monastery and that mail ballots cast from there would be “illegal votes.” Cliff Maloney, who hired 120 people to go door-to-door across Pennsylvania urging Republican voters to return their mail ballots, wrote on X that one of those workers had “discovered” an Erie address where 53 people were registered to vote but “NO ONE lives there.”

The address Maloney posted belonged to the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, where Schmidt and 54 other sisters live full time. And the Catholic order, known for its engagement in social justice issues, was alarmed by the accusations.

“To be unjustly accused of voter fraud is just really disgusting, ugly,” Schmidt, the prioress, told The Washington Post.

“To be unjustly accused of voter fraud is just really disgusting, ugly,” Schmidt, the prioress, told The Washington Post...

The Benedictine Sisters are planning to take legal action. Ahead of Nov. 5, just like in homes across the country, “there’s a lot of angst about the upcoming election in our house,” Schmidt said."