ALMARIA VELLA — From the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, His Eminence the Cardinal-Primate yesterday issued a statement of rare gravity, calling the commonwealth to prayer for the four children wounded at the nursery school of Sant Pau de les Fonts and urging, in terms that admitted of no political gloss, that compassion and stability walk together through the days to come.

"There are hours," the Cardinal said, "in which the Church must speak not as a party to any debate but as a mother to her children. This is such an hour." He asked that the bells of every parish from Almaria Vella to the furthest hermitage of the sierra be rung at noon, and that the faithful hold the families of Sant Pau in their prayers through the octave.

The Queen Regent Elisenda, who has written personally to each of the four families, is understood to have visited the Royal Hospital in the small hours of Thursday morning, accompanied only by her private chaplain and a single lady-in-waiting. Two of the children remain in a condition described by the attending physicians as critical but no longer deteriorating.

The Crown Prosecutor has confirmed that the accused will be arraigned before the High Court of Almaria on the most serious charges the statute allows. The Ministry of Education has ordered an immediate review of security protocols at every state nursery, and the Intelligence Directorate's raised alert for places of worship — issued earlier in the week on grounds unconnected with this case — remains in force.

It is not the Herald's practice to burden such a story with commentary. We note only that the Cardinal's counsel and the Crown's action have, in this matter, moved as one.