In Brunette I encountered absolute horror. In the first church we entered, we saw a large ciborium on the altar in which consecrated hosts were inserted in feces. My friend exploded! With his handkerchief he removed the hard feces and put the ciborium back into the tabernacle. He was a Catholic, and he wept like a baby beside the desecrated altar. His face was just covered with tears. I couldn’t cry because I was beyond crying.

Next, we came to a cemetery, and again we were petrified with absolute horror. My companion sat down on a rock and swore as I’ve never heard a man swear before — deliberately, slowly, monotonously, in every way it is possible to swear. He swore in sheer horror before the blasphemy that met our eyes.

It was the cemetery of a Carmelite monastery. The women had been buried on one side, the men on the other. The bodies had been disinterred. Some were strewn on the ground, still in their brown habits. Others were naked, and arranged in positions of intercourse. It was a kind of surrealistic hell, and it remains etched forever in my mind. There are no words to describe it.

My companion turned to me and said, “Can you stomach this?”

I said, “We are going to kneel down right here in the midst of these bodies and pray for those who have done this.”

He said, “The hell we will!”

I said, “Yes, we will. We are walking on holy ground. These people have been martyred after death. This is blasphemy. We have to kneel and pray for those who have done this. It’s the only way to purify the cemetery.”

He looked at me and began to cry.

He said, “Catherine, you’re right.”

We knelt down and prayed.

We continued on and came to a hospital run by Carmelite nuns. We both showed our passes (he spoke Spanish) and we were allowed to go to the bed of a nun. She was about 20 years old, and she had been raped by about 15 soldiers. After they raped her they cut off her breasts and cut her thighs in small pieces, leaving the flesh hanging. She was dying, so they kept her under morphine. This time I fainted.