Vatican City - The Vatican staged its largest mass beatification ceremony ever Sunday, putting 498 victims of religious persecution before and during the Spanish Civil War on the path to possible sainthood.
Tens of thousands attended the ceremony, which was held in St. Peter's Square. The event drew criticism from some Spaniards who saw it as implicit criticism of the Socialist government as it takes a critical look at the country's civil war past and the Fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. The Roman Catholic Church staunchly supported the Franco regime, and the martyrs honored Sunday were largely victims of Franco's leftist foes.
The civil war, from 1936 to 1939, pitted the elected, leftist government against the rightist forces that rose up under Franco, who went on to win and presided over a nearly 40-year dictatorship.
Violence against the clergy in Spain had been simmering since 1931, with leftist forces targeting an institution they saw as a symbol of wealth, repression and inequality. Their attacks against the church gave Franco a pretext for launching his rebellion. The church estimates that nearly 7,000 membvers of the clergy were killed in Spain from 1931 to 1939.
Seventy-one bishops from Spain, conservative Spanish politicians and pilgrims massed at St. Peter's for the ceremony. Many were waving Spain's flag and broke into applause after Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, declared the 498 beatified.
Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, represented the government and regional officials were also on hand.
Pope Benedict XVI appeared at his studio window after the Mass to greet the pilgrims, saying the beatification of so many ordinary Catholics showed that martyrdom was not reserved to a few but "is a realistic possibility for the entire Christian people."
"This martyrdom in ordinary life is an important witness in today's secularized society," he added.
Some in Spain have questioned the timing of the ceremony: It came three days before Parliament was expected to vote on a law sponsored by the Socialist government that would make symbolic amends to victims of the war and of the Franco dictatorship.
The bill mentions people persecuted for their religious beliefs, but for the most part it is an unprecedented, formal condemnation of the Franco regime.
Critics of the ceremony at the Vatican - which since the late 1980s has beatified nearly 500 other clergy killed in the civil war - said the pope was acting with political motivation and was hitting back at the Spanish government by choosing now to beatify nearly another 500 all at once.
The church said the ceremony was held now because Benedict finished signing the decrees only two months ago.
But the relationship between the Holy See and Spain has been strained since the Socialists took office in 2004. The government has angered the Vatican by introducing legislation that facilitated divorce on demand and by giving the state's blessing to gay marriages. It also scrapped plans by the previous conservative government to make religion an obligatory subject in schools. Spain also now permits abortion.
Saraiva Martins took aim at all those initiatives in his homily Sunday, saying that Catholics must defend church teaching on protecting life from conception until natural death - the Vatican's language for opposing abortion.
The cardinal also criticized gay marriage, divorce and education initiatives. He stressed the need to protect the family "founded on the sole and indissoluble marriage between a man and woman, on the primary right for parents to educate their children and on other question that spring up in daily life in the society in which we live."
The comments drew sustained applause from the crowd at St. Peter's, which included some Spaniards waving postcards featuring Franco-era flags.
Ties between the church and the government also have deteriorated over the government's attempts to make the church more self-financing. A year ago, the government stopped making direct payments to the church, instead giving taxpayers a choice on whether to divert 0.7 percent of their taxes to it.