How distant was this past?
The people doing it are largely the WWII people and some of them possibly still alive since 1940 isn’t so long ago.
Many, if not most Catholic nations are known as cruel places, our southern border is the entrance into about 20 of them including the most Catholic nations on earth.
It may be hard to imagine, but many middle class areas of the UK, even in northern England, did not have indoor plumbing the first time I visited there in the late 1960s. I could not get a decent shower or make a convenient phone call in a middle-class area of Naples in 1990. And few countries on earth ever reached the level of creature comfort for most citizens that we who are alive today experienced in the United States. When countries are poorer, so are their choices and their behaviors under stress. Therefore it is, I restate, unfair to try to make a direct comparison without all the facts.
There is a post on another thread that gives more detail about this case: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3163197/posts?page=101#101