giving poisoned sweets to children. Some nuns were grabbed by the hair in the streets. One had her hair pulled out...". On the night of July 19, 1936 alone, 50 churches were burned. In Barcelona, out of the 58 churches, only the cathedral was spared, and similar events occurred almost everywhere in Republican Spain. All the Catholic churches in the Republican zone were closed, but the attacks were not limited to Catholic churches, as synagogues were also pillaged and closed, though some small Protestant churches were spared. The Bishop of Almeria was murdered while working on a history of Toledo. His card index file was destroyed. In Madrid, a nun was killed because she refused a proposition of marriage from a militiaman who helped storm her convent. Aftermath With the total victory of the Nationalists over the Republicans in 1939, the Red Terror ended in the country, but individual terror attacks continued sporadically by remnant Communists and Socialists hiding in French border regions, with little result. Throughout the country, the Catholic Church held Te Deums to thank God for the outcome. Numerous left-wing personalities were tried for the Red Terror, not all of whom were guilty. Franco's victory was followed by thousands of summary executions (the remains of 35,000 people are estimated by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) to lie in mass graves) and imprisonments, and many were put to forced labour, building railways, drying out swamps, digging canals (La Corchuela'', the Canal of the Bajo Guadalquivir), construction of the Valle de los Caídos monument, etc. The 1940 shooting of the president of the Catalan government, Lluís Companys, was one of the most notable cases of this early repression. The new Pope Pius XII sent a radio message of congratulation to the Spanish government, clerics and people on April 16, 1939. He referred to the denunciation of his predecessor, Pope Pius XI, who had described past horrors and the need to defend and restore the rights of God and religion. The pope stated that the victims of terror died for Jesus Christ. He wished peace and prosperity upon the Spanish people and appealed to them to justly punish Republicans who were guilty of war crimes, but to also exercise leniency and generosity against the many others who were on the other side. He also asked for their full participation in society and entrusted them to the