CDS associated with the death of Father Max. Party will react “firmly”

Almost 50 years ago, Maximino Sousa and Maria de Lurdes died in a bomb attack. There were never any convictions.

It was on April 2, 1976: the Father Max and the student Mary of Lourdes they were murdered, num bomb attack.

The two were in a car Cumieira, near Vila Real. After an adult literacy session, and when they were at kilometer 71 of National Highway 2, close to midnight, the bang. One bomba had been placed in car of the priest, who died hours later, during the following dawn.

Maximino Barbosa de Sousa, better known as Father Max, had only 32 years. He would be the candidate of the Popular Democratic Union (UDP) in the elections that month, on April 25, 1976. Teacher, he came from France with the ideals of May 68, teacher, he was popular among young people. And PSD and CDS “hated” him, they said at the time.

This Thursday marks 50 years since the night of the attack. A crime that, in the beginning, was associated with romantic motives; but was later associated with members of the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal (MDLP) – far-right organization led by António de Spínola suspected of several crimes, including bomb attacks, between 1975 and 1976.

But there were never convictions related to those two deaths. There is no proofthe courts were saying. Even today, phrases can be read on the walls of Cumieira: “Father Max – murderers on the loose”.

This Sunday, he joined mercenaries linked to the CDS to the bomb attack on April 2, 1976.

It was a security of the deputy Galvão de Melofrom the CDS, to hire two of the five mercenaries who carried out the crime, says the newspaper – based on the description that appears in the book ‘O Puto’, about the life of (or “Comandante Paulo”), the mercenary who, in that book, confessed to being involved in the murder of Father Max.

The title announces “Mercenaries linked to the CDS hired to kill Father Max 50 years ago.”

Nuno Melo didn’t like it of this title, which is highlighted in: “In a State that respects Law and values, this cover is an affront and an indignity, the antithesis of serious and truthful journalism, a sign of a profound anomaly that is beginning to affect the pillars of the regime itself”.

The president of the CDS warns in: “The CDS will react firmly in defense of truth and decency.”