Vatican will help for a discreet burial to a dictator

MADRID The Vatican has agreed to find ways to prevent the remains of the late dictator Francisco Franco from being reburied in the center of the Spanish capital after the exhumation of a mausoleum, the Spanish government said on Tuesday.

The relatives of Franco want to bury the embalmed body in the family crypt located under the cathedral of Madrid, decision to which the Spanish religious authorities affirm not to be able to oppose, the tomb having been acquired by the relatives of the dictator there is several decades.

According to the Vice President of the Government, Carmen Calvo, the Vatican Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin "understood" at a meeting held on Monday that the body of Franco must be transferred in a place "in conditions of dignity", the "executive" has the right to guarantee throughout the Spanish territory that Franco is not exalted ".

"The solution can not be the Almudena," said Calvo in reference to Madrid Cathedral.

The government "must guarantee throughout the Spanish territory that Franco is extolled nowhere, nowhere on the territory," said Calvo.

"The place where their remains are located must finally be a place where the manifestations of exaltation can not be produced," he added.

The comments of Calvo, who would be responsible for the exhumation, indicate a new chapter in the government's attempts to solve the problem of human remains, which have faced the resistance of the heirs of the late dictator and supporters of Franco .

The Franco family crypt located under Madrid's cathedral is close to several tourist sites and the Royal Palace, where an energetic crowd frolic.

Opponents fear that burying the remains of Franco on the spot would make the place a place of pilgrimage for supporters of the right and others nostalgic for dictatorship.

"What we have agreed is that the government and the Catholic Church are together to find a way out that obviously can not be Almudena," Calvo said.