Involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime
Encyclopedia
Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše covers the role of the Croatian Catholic Church
in the Independent State of Croatia
(NDH), a Nazi puppet state created on the territory of Axis
-occupied Yugoslavia in 1941. The NDH was controlled by the Ustaše
movement.
was initially welcomed by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and by many Catholic priests. Ante Pavelić
, the head of the Ustaša, was anti-Serb and pro-Catholic, viewing Catholicism
as an integral part of Croat culture. Cornwell views the "ancient loyalties to the papacy going back thirteen hundred years" as one of the historical legacies that "underpinned the formation of the NDH" along with Catholic Croat resentment against Orthodox Serbs.
For the Ustaša, "relations with the Vatican were as important as relations with Germany" because Vatican recognition was the key to widespread Croat support. Ante Pavelić
was received in a private papal audience in Rome in May 1941, just after becoming dictator of Croatia
. According to Michael Phayer
, "after receiving a papal blessing in 1941, Ante Pavelić and his Ustaša lieutenants unleashed an unspeakable genocide in their new country". However, Pius XII refused to cut diplomatic ties with the Ustaša regime and met Pavelić again in 1943. Pius XII was criticized for his reception of Pavelić: an unattributed British Foreign Office memo on the subject described Pius XII as "the greatest moral coward of our age." For their part, the Vatican hoped the Ustaša would defeat communism
in Croatia and reconvert many of the 200,000 who had left the Catholic Church for the Serbian Orthodox Church
since World War I
.
Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac
was at the time of his appointment in 1934 the youngest Catholic bishop in the world. He initially received very little guidance from the Vatican and was given great leeway in how to deal with the rise of the Ustaše regime. His control over the lower bishops and clergy was not uniform. Stepinac began attempting to publicly distance himself from the Ustaša in May 1941. As the Ustaše murders "increased exponentially" in the summer and fall of 1941, Stepinac fell under "heavy criticism" for the church's collaboration, but was "not yet prepared to break with" the Ustaše. Stepinac gave the Ustaše the "benefit of the doubt" and "decided on a limited response".
Stepinac shared the hope for a Catholic Croatia and viewed the Yugoslav state as "the jail of the Croatian nation". The Vatican was not as enthusiastic as Stepinac and did not formally recognize the Ustaša, instead sending Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone as an apostolic visitor
. Stepinac, who arranged the meeting between Pius XII and Pavelić, was satisfied with this step, viewing it as de facto recognition and Marcone as a nuncio
in all but name.
It is well-known that many Catholic clergy members participated directly or indirectly in Ustaša campaigns of violence, as is attested in the work of Corrado Zoli (Italian) and Evelyn Waugh
(English). The most notorious example is that of expelled Franciscan Miroslav Filipović
, known as "the devil of Jasenovac" for running the Jasenovac concentration camp
, where estimates of the number killed range between 49,600 and 600,000. Ivan Šarić
is believed to have been the "worst" of the Catholic bishops who supported the Ustaša; his diocesan newspaper wrote: "there is no limit to love. The movement of liberation of the world from the Jews
is a movement for the renewal of human dignity. Omniscient and omnipotent God stands behind this movement". Bishop Šarić also appropriated Jewish property for his own use.
Some Catholic priests served in the personal bodyguard of Pavelić, including Ivan Guberina, a leader of the Croatian Catholic movement
, a form of Catholic Action
. Another, Bozidas Bralo, was the chief of the security police in Sarajevo
, who initiated many antisemitic actions. In order to consolidate the Ustaša party power, much of the party work in Bosnia and Herzegovina Jure Francetić
(an Ustaše Commissioner of this province), was put in the hands of Catholic priests.
One Catholic priest, Mate Mugos wrote that clergy should put down the prayer book and take up the revolver. Another, Dyonisy Juricev, wrote in the Novi list
that to kill seven-year-olds was not a sin. Phayer argues that "establishing the fact of genocide in Croatia prior to the Holocaust carries great historical weight for our study because Catholics were the perpetrators and not, as in Poland, the victims".
Croats appropriated many churches that were "vacated or requisitioned" from the Orthodox Serbs. The Catholic episcopate and HKP
, the Croatian branch of Catholic Action
, a lay organization, were involved in the coordination and administration of these policies.
of Croatian bishops in November 1941. The synod appealed to Pavelić to treat Jews "as humanely as possible, considering that there were German troops in the country". The Vatican replied with praise to Marcone with praise for what the synod had done for "citizens of Jewish origin", although Israeli historian Menachem Shelah states that the synod concerned itself only with converted Jews. Pius XII personally praised the synod for "courage and decisiveness". Shelach has written that,
However, according to scholar Ronald J. Rychlak "Croatian Archbishop Alojzij Stepinac, after having received direction from Rome, condemned the brutal actions of the government. A speech he gave on October 24, 1942 is typical of many that he made refuting Nazi theory:
Rychlak continues: "The Associated Press reported that “by 1942 Stepinac had become a harsh critic” of the Nazi puppet regime, condemning its “genocidal policies, which killed tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and Croats.” He thereby earned the enmity of the Croatian dictator, Ante Pavelic. (When Pavelic traveled to Rome, he was greatly angered because he was denied the diplomatic audience he had wanted.)
On October 13, 1946, when the postwar Communist authorities tried to concoct a case against Archbishop Stepinac, American Jewish leader Louis Braier stated:
, the bishop of Ljubljana in Slovenia
allowed Jews that had converted to Catholicism
and fled from Croatia into his diocese to remain there, with assistance from Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi in obtaining the permission of the Italian civil authorities.
, "it is impossible to believe that Stepinac and the Vatican did not know that the Ustasha murders amounted to genocide". Cornwell considers the Catholic involvement important because of: "the Vatican's knowledge of the atrocities, Pacelli's failure to use his good offices to intervene, and the complicity it represented in the Final Solution being planned in northern Europe".
Pius XII was a long-standing supported of Croat nationalism; he hosted a national pilgrimate to Rome in November 1939, for the cause of the canonization of Nicola Tavelic, and largely "confirmed the Ustashe perception of history". In a meeting with Primate Stepinac, Pius XII reiterated the epithet of Pope Leo X
, that the Croats were "the outpost of Christianity", a term which itself implied that the Orthodox Serbs were not true Christians. Pius XII foretold to Stepinac that:
Undersecretary of State Montini (later elected Pope Paul VI
) was responsible for "day-to-day matters concerning Croatia and Poland". He reported to Pius XII on a daily basis, and heard of the Ustaša atrocities in 1941. In March 1942, Montini asked the Ustaša representative to the Vatican "Is it possible that these atrocities have taken place?", and responded that he would view such accusations with "considerable reserve" once the representative called them "lies and propaganda". Montini's fellow Undersecretary Domenico Tardini told the Ustaša representative that the Vatican was willing to indulge the Ustaša regime because: "Croatia is a young state [...] Youngsters often err because of their age. It is therefore not surprising that Croatia also erred".
Stepinac was summoned to Rome in April 1942, where he delivered a nine-page document detailing various misdeeds of Pavelić. This document described the atrocities as "anomalies" that were either unknown or unauthorized by Pavelić himself; it is omitted from the ADSS. However, by 1942 the Vatican "preferred to have Stepinac try to rein the fascists in rather than risk the effect that a papal denunciation would have on the unstable Croatian state".
According to Eugene Tisserant
, the future Dean of the College of Cardinals, "we have the list of all clergymen who participated in these atrocities and we shall punish them at the right time to cleanse our conscience of the stain with which they spotted us". Pius XII was well-informed of the involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime, but decided against condemning the regime or even taking action against the involved clergy, who had "joined in the slaughter", fearing that it would lead to schism in the Croatian church or undermine the formation of a future Croatian state.
Phayer contrasts the Vatican's "limited and sketchy" knowledge of the genocide in Poland with "the Croatian case, in which both the nuncio and the head of the church, Bishop Alojzje Stepinac, were in continuous contact with the Holy See while the genocide was being committed". Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione instructed nuncio Marcone that "if your eminence can find a suitable occasion, he should recommend in a discreet manner, that would not be interpreted as an official appeal, that moderation be employed with regard to Jews on Croatian territory. Your Eminence should see to it that [...] the impression of loyal cooperation with the civil authorities be always preserved". According to Phayer, the Vatican "preferred to bring diplomatic pressure on the Ushtasha government instead of challenging the fascists publicly on the immorality of genocide".
However, according to Professor Ronald J. Rychlak "Between 1941 and 1944, the Vatican sent four official letters and made numerous oral pleas and protests regarding the deportation of Jews from Slovakia." Rychlak quotes a letter from Pius himself, dated April 7, 1943:
.
Cornwell is unsure whether the Vatican was aware of the exact atrocities committed by the Ustaše by this point, but he noted "it was known from the very beginning that Pavelic was a totalitarian dictator, a puppet of Hitler and Mussolini, that he had passed a series of viciously racist and anti-Semitic laws, and that he was bent on enforced conversions from Orthodox to Catholic Christianity".
Pope Pius XII
protected Ante Pavelić
after World War II, gave him "refuge in the Vatican properties in Rome", and assisted in his flight to South America; Pavelić and Pius XII shared the goal of a Catholic state in the Balkans and were unified in their opposition to the rising Communist state under Tito. Pius XII also believed that Pavelić and other war criminals could not get a fair trial in Yugoslavia. After arriving in Rome in 1946, Pavelić used the Vatican "ratline"
to reach Argentina in 1948, along with other Ustaša, Russian, Yugoslav, Italian, and American spies and agents all tried to apprehend Pavelić in Rome but the Vatican refused all cooperation and vigorously defended its extraterritorial status. Pavelić was never captured or tried for his crimes.
According to Phayer, "the Vatican's motivation for harboring Pavelić grew in lockstep with its apprehension about Tito's treatment of the church".
Dozens of Croatian refugees and war criminals were housed in the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome
in Rome. Intelligence reports differed over the location of Pavelić himself. Counter Intelligence Corps
agent William Gowen (the son of Franklin Gowen, a US diplomat in the Vatican) was one of those tasked with finding Pavelić; although the CIC hoped the relationship would reveal Pavelić's location, eventually the reverse occurred and the Vatican convinced the US to back off. By the Spring of 1947, the Vatican was putting intense diplomatic pressure on the US and the UK not to extradite Ustaša war criminals to Yugoslavia.
Special Agent Gowen warned in 1947 that, due to Pavelić's record of opposing the Orthodox Church as well as Communism, his "contacts are so high and his present position is so compromising to the Vatican, that any extradition of the subject would be a staggering blow to the Roman Catholic Church". The feared embarrassment of the Church was not due to Pavelić's use of the Vatican "ratline" (which Pavelić at this point, still hoping to return, had not yet committed to using), but rather due to the facts the Vatican believed would be revealed in Pavelić's eventual trial.
(the Croatian Seminary near the Vatican) brought a large amount of looted gold with them; this was latter moved to other Vatican extraterritorial property and/or the Vatican Bank
. Although this gold would be worth hundreds of thousands of 2008 US dollars, it constituted only a small percentage of the gold looted during World War II
, mostly by the Nazis. According to Phayer, "top Vatican personnel would have known the whereabouts of the gold".
Surviving victims of the Ustaše and their next of kin living in California brought a class action
lawsuit against the Vatican bank and others in US federal court, Alperin v. Vatican Bank. Specifically, the Vatican bank was charged with laundering and convering "the Ustaša treasury, making deposits in Europe and North and South American, [and] distributing the funds to exiled Ustaša leaders including Pavelić". A principal piece of evidence against the Vatican is the "Bigelow dispatch", an October 16, 1946 dispatch from Emerson Bigelow in Rome to Harold Glasser
, the director of monetary research for the U.S. Treasury Department. Former OSS agent William Gowen has also given deposition
as an expert witness
that in 1946 Colonel Ivan Babić
transported 10 truckloads of gold from Switzerland to the Pontifical College. All charges have been dismissed.
According to Phayer, "even before the end of the war, Tito had begun to settle the score with the Ustaša, which meant with the Catholic Church as well because of the close relations between the two". Partisans of Tito retaliated against the Catholic clergy for their perceived or actual collaboration with the Ustaše; by February 1945, at least fourteen priests had been killed; by March 1945, as many as 160 priests; by the end of the year, 270 priests. According to Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh
(who visited Croatia after the war), "the task of the partisans was made easier in that the clergy as a whole had undoubtedly compromised the church by tolerating the pro-Axis Ustashis, if not actively collaborating with them". Franciscans in particularly were singled out for partisan attacks and fifteen Franciscan monasteries were destroyed.
In this sense, the situation was a microcosm of the general situation of the Vatican in Communist Eastern Europe. Pius XII sent American bishop Joseph Patrick Hurley
as his envoy to Tito (as Hurley carried the title of "regent", this was a step below official diplomatic recognition). Tito requested to Hurley that Archbishop Stepinac be recalled to Rome; the pope deferred to Stepinac himself, who chose to stay.
Bishop Gregorij Rožman
of Ljubljana was the first bishop tried for "collaboration
" in Yugoslavia, in absentia
, by the military court in August 1946. The trial was repealed in 2007 by the Slovene Supreme Court The British occupational authorities had recommended that he "be arrested and interned as a Ustaša collaborator". Phayer views his trial as a "warm-up for proceedings against Stepinac", and after Rožman was convicted, Stepinac was arrested. (Rožman found safe haven in the United States, where he died.)
Stepinac
Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac
was indicted on the charges of supporting the Ustaše government, urging forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs, and encouraging Ustaše resistance in Yugoslavia. Phayer argues that Stepinac (who remained silent during his trial) could have defended himself from the charge of supporting forced conversions, but not the other two. Stepinac was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years imprisonment. He served 5 years in the Lepoglava prison
before the sentence was commuted to home arrest.
Pius XII elevated Stepinac to the cardinalate in 1952. Although Phayer agrees in part with criticisms of Stepinac conviction as a "show trial", he states "the charge that he supported the Ustaša regime was, of course, true, as everyone knew", and that "if Stepinac had responded to the charges against him, his defense would have inevitably unraveled, exposing the Vatican's support of the genocidal Pavelić". Most incriminatingly, Stepinac had allowed the state papers of the Ustaše to be stored in his episcopal residence, papers that would be crucial to the Ustaše in retaking control of the country and which contained volumes of incriminating information against Ustaše war criminals.
Stepinac was transferred back home to the village of Krašić
in 1953 and died in his residence seven years later. In 1998, Pope John Paul II
beatified
him.
Catholic Church in Croatia
Roman Catholicism in Croatia is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and curia in Rome.There are an estimated 3.8 million baptised Roman Catholics in Croatia, roughly 85% of the population. The national sanctuary of Croatia is in Marija Bistrica...
in the Independent State of Croatia
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
(NDH), a Nazi puppet state created on the territory of Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
-occupied Yugoslavia in 1941. The NDH was controlled by the Ustaše
Ustaše
The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...
movement.
Creation and recognition
The creation of the Independent State of CroatiaIndependent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
was initially welcomed by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and by many Catholic priests. Ante Pavelić
Ante Pavelic
Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader, revolutionary, and politician. He ruled as Poglavnik or head, of the Independent State of Croatia , a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia...
, the head of the Ustaša, was anti-Serb and pro-Catholic, viewing Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
as an integral part of Croat culture. Cornwell views the "ancient loyalties to the papacy going back thirteen hundred years" as one of the historical legacies that "underpinned the formation of the NDH" along with Catholic Croat resentment against Orthodox Serbs.
For the Ustaša, "relations with the Vatican were as important as relations with Germany" because Vatican recognition was the key to widespread Croat support. Ante Pavelić
Ante Pavelic
Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader, revolutionary, and politician. He ruled as Poglavnik or head, of the Independent State of Croatia , a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia...
was received in a private papal audience in Rome in May 1941, just after becoming dictator of Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
. According to Michael Phayer
Michael Phayer
Michael Phayer, born 1935, is a historian and professor emeritus at Marquette University in Milwaukee and has written on 19th and 20th century European history and the Holocaust....
, "after receiving a papal blessing in 1941, Ante Pavelić and his Ustaša lieutenants unleashed an unspeakable genocide in their new country". However, Pius XII refused to cut diplomatic ties with the Ustaša regime and met Pavelić again in 1943. Pius XII was criticized for his reception of Pavelić: an unattributed British Foreign Office memo on the subject described Pius XII as "the greatest moral coward of our age." For their part, the Vatican hoped the Ustaša would defeat communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in Croatia and reconvert many of the 200,000 who had left the Catholic Church for the Serbian Orthodox Church
Serbian Orthodox Church
The Serbian Orthodox Church is one of the autocephalous Orthodox Christian churches, ranking sixth in order of seniority after Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Russia...
since World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac
Aloysius Stepinac
Aloysius Viktor Stepinac , also known as Blessed Aloysius Stepinac, was a Croatian Catholic cardinal and Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 to 1960. In 1998 he was declared a martyr and beatified by Pope John Paul II....
was at the time of his appointment in 1934 the youngest Catholic bishop in the world. He initially received very little guidance from the Vatican and was given great leeway in how to deal with the rise of the Ustaše regime. His control over the lower bishops and clergy was not uniform. Stepinac began attempting to publicly distance himself from the Ustaša in May 1941. As the Ustaše murders "increased exponentially" in the summer and fall of 1941, Stepinac fell under "heavy criticism" for the church's collaboration, but was "not yet prepared to break with" the Ustaše. Stepinac gave the Ustaše the "benefit of the doubt" and "decided on a limited response".
Stepinac shared the hope for a Catholic Croatia and viewed the Yugoslav state as "the jail of the Croatian nation". The Vatican was not as enthusiastic as Stepinac and did not formally recognize the Ustaša, instead sending Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone as an apostolic visitor
Apostolic visitor
In the Catholic Church, an apostolic visitor is a papal representative with a transient mission to perform a canonical visitation of relatively short duration...
. Stepinac, who arranged the meeting between Pius XII and Pavelić, was satisfied with this step, viewing it as de facto recognition and Marcone as a nuncio
Nuncio
Nuncio is an ecclesiastical diplomatic title, derived from the ancient Latin word, Nuntius, meaning "envoy." This article addresses this title as well as derived similar titles, all within the structure of the Roman Catholic Church...
in all but name.
Role in Ustaše violence
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
(English). The most notorious example is that of expelled Franciscan Miroslav Filipović
Miroslav Filipovic
Miroslav Filipović was a Croatian Ustaše and Roman Catholic friar who was convicted of war crimes by both a German military court and a Yugoslav civil court and hanged in Belgrade.-Early life:Filipović's date of birth was 5 June 1915, but little else about his early years has been...
, known as "the devil of Jasenovac" for running the Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia and occupied Yugoslavia during World War II...
, where estimates of the number killed range between 49,600 and 600,000. Ivan Šarić
Ivan Šaric
Ivan Šarić was a Roman Catholic priest who became the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vrhbosna in 1922...
is believed to have been the "worst" of the Catholic bishops who supported the Ustaša; his diocesan newspaper wrote: "there is no limit to love. The movement of liberation of the world from the Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
is a movement for the renewal of human dignity. Omniscient and omnipotent God stands behind this movement". Bishop Šarić also appropriated Jewish property for his own use.
Some Catholic priests served in the personal bodyguard of Pavelić, including Ivan Guberina, a leader of the Croatian Catholic movement
Croatian Catholic movement
Croatian Catholic movement is the name for the gathering of organized Catholic lay initiatives and associations, who acts in the first half of the 20th century in Croatia, as a response on increasing liberalism, with a new, aggressive approach, and on the phenomena of Church and religion lost the...
, a form of Catholic Action
Catholic Action
Catholic Action was the name of many groups of lay Catholics who were attempting to encourage a Catholic influence on society.They were especially active in the nineteenth century in historically Catholic countries that fell under anti-clerical regimes such as Spain, Italy, Bavaria, France, and...
. Another, Bozidas Bralo, was the chief of the security police in Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
, who initiated many antisemitic actions. In order to consolidate the Ustaša party power, much of the party work in Bosnia and Herzegovina Jure Francetić
Jure Francetic
Jure Francetić was an World War II Ustaše Commissioner of Bosnia and Herzegovina, responsible for the massacre of Bosnian Serbs and Jews.-Early life and activities prior to formation of NDH:...
(an Ustaše Commissioner of this province), was put in the hands of Catholic priests.
One Catholic priest, Mate Mugos wrote that clergy should put down the prayer book and take up the revolver. Another, Dyonisy Juricev, wrote in the Novi list
Novi list
Novi list is the oldest Croatian daily newspaper published in Rijeka. It is most read in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County of Croatia....
that to kill seven-year-olds was not a sin. Phayer argues that "establishing the fact of genocide in Croatia prior to the Holocaust carries great historical weight for our study because Catholics were the perpetrators and not, as in Poland, the victims".
Forced conversions
As Pavelić's government cracked down on the Orthodox Serbs, along with the Jewish, Muslim, and Protestant Germanic minorities, the Catholic clergy took steps to encourage Orthodox Serbs to convert to Roman Catholicism. By July 14, 1941—"anticipating its selective conversion policy and eventual goal of genocide"—the Croatian Ministry of Justice instructed the Croatian episcopate that "priests or schoolmasters or, in a word, any of the intelligentsia—including rich Orthodox tradesmen and artisans" should not be admitted. Those that were pre-rejected from the "coming program of enforced conversion" were deported and killed, although many that converted met the same fate.Croats appropriated many churches that were "vacated or requisitioned" from the Orthodox Serbs. The Catholic episcopate and HKP
Croatian Catholic movement
Croatian Catholic movement is the name for the gathering of organized Catholic lay initiatives and associations, who acts in the first half of the 20th century in Croatia, as a response on increasing liberalism, with a new, aggressive approach, and on the phenomena of Church and religion lost the...
, the Croatian branch of Catholic Action
Catholic Action
Catholic Action was the name of many groups of lay Catholics who were attempting to encourage a Catholic influence on society.They were especially active in the nineteenth century in historically Catholic countries that fell under anti-clerical regimes such as Spain, Italy, Bavaria, France, and...
, a lay organization, were involved in the coordination and administration of these policies.
Archbishop Stepinac
Archbishop Stepinac called a synodSynod
A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...
of Croatian bishops in November 1941. The synod appealed to Pavelić to treat Jews "as humanely as possible, considering that there were German troops in the country". The Vatican replied with praise to Marcone with praise for what the synod had done for "citizens of Jewish origin", although Israeli historian Menachem Shelah states that the synod concerned itself only with converted Jews. Pius XII personally praised the synod for "courage and decisiveness". Shelach has written that,
A bishops' conference that met in Zagreb in November 1941 was not... prepared to denounce the forced conversion of Serbs that had taken place in the summer of 1941, let alone condemn the persecution and murder of Serbs and Jews. It was not until the middle of 1943 that Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb, publicly came out against the murder of Croatian Jews (most of whom had been killed by that time) the Serbs, and other nationalities. In the early stage, the Croatian massacres were explained as "teething troubles of a new regime" in Rome by Msgr Domenico Tardini of the Vatican state secretariat.)
However, according to scholar Ronald J. Rychlak "Croatian Archbishop Alojzij Stepinac, after having received direction from Rome, condemned the brutal actions of the government. A speech he gave on October 24, 1942 is typical of many that he made refuting Nazi theory:
All men and all races are children of God; all without distinction. Those who are Gypsies, black, European, or Aryan all have the same rights. . . . For this reason, the Catholic Church had always condemned, and continues to condemn, all injustice and all violence committed in the name of theories of class, race, or nationality. It is not permissible to persecute Gypsies or Jews because they are thought to be an inferior race."
Rychlak continues: "The Associated Press reported that “by 1942 Stepinac had become a harsh critic” of the Nazi puppet regime, condemning its “genocidal policies, which killed tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and Croats.” He thereby earned the enmity of the Croatian dictator, Ante Pavelic. (When Pavelic traveled to Rome, he was greatly angered because he was denied the diplomatic audience he had wanted.)
On October 13, 1946, when the postwar Communist authorities tried to concoct a case against Archbishop Stepinac, American Jewish leader Louis Braier stated:
This great man of the Church has been accused of being a Nazi collaborator. We, the Jews, deny it. He is one of the few men who rose in Europe against the Nazi tyranny precisely at the moment when it was most dangerous. He spoke openly and fearlessly against the racial laws. After His Holiness, Pius XII, he was the greatest defender of the persecuted Jews in Europe."
Dissenting clergy
A few prominent Catholic clergymembers objected to the Ustaša violence. One of them was Aloysius Mišić, the bishop of Mostar. Gregorij RožmanGregorij Rožman
Gregorij Rožman was a Slovenian Roman Catholic clergyman and theologian. Between 1930 and 1959, he served as bishop of the Diocese of Ljubljana. He is most famous for his controversial role during World War II...
, the bishop of Ljubljana in Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
allowed Jews that had converted to Catholicism
Conversion of Jews to Catholicism during the Holocaust
The conversion of Jews to Catholicism during the Holocaust is one of the most controversial aspects of the record of Pope Pius XII during The Holocaust....
and fled from Croatia into his diocese to remain there, with assistance from Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi in obtaining the permission of the Italian civil authorities.
Role of the Vatican
According to historian Michael PhayerMichael Phayer
Michael Phayer, born 1935, is a historian and professor emeritus at Marquette University in Milwaukee and has written on 19th and 20th century European history and the Holocaust....
, "it is impossible to believe that Stepinac and the Vatican did not know that the Ustasha murders amounted to genocide". Cornwell considers the Catholic involvement important because of: "the Vatican's knowledge of the atrocities, Pacelli's failure to use his good offices to intervene, and the complicity it represented in the Final Solution being planned in northern Europe".
Pius XII was a long-standing supported of Croat nationalism; he hosted a national pilgrimate to Rome in November 1939, for the cause of the canonization of Nicola Tavelic, and largely "confirmed the Ustashe perception of history". In a meeting with Primate Stepinac, Pius XII reiterated the epithet of Pope Leo X
Pope Leo X
Pope Leo X , born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was the Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope. He is known for granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 Theses...
, that the Croats were "the outpost of Christianity", a term which itself implied that the Orthodox Serbs were not true Christians. Pius XII foretold to Stepinac that:
- "The hope of a better future seems to be smiling on you, a future in which the relations between Church and State in your country will be regulated in harmonious action to the advantage of both".
Undersecretary of State Montini (later elected Pope Paul VI
Pope Paul VI
Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...
) was responsible for "day-to-day matters concerning Croatia and Poland". He reported to Pius XII on a daily basis, and heard of the Ustaša atrocities in 1941. In March 1942, Montini asked the Ustaša representative to the Vatican "Is it possible that these atrocities have taken place?", and responded that he would view such accusations with "considerable reserve" once the representative called them "lies and propaganda". Montini's fellow Undersecretary Domenico Tardini told the Ustaša representative that the Vatican was willing to indulge the Ustaša regime because: "Croatia is a young state [...] Youngsters often err because of their age. It is therefore not surprising that Croatia also erred".
Stepinac was summoned to Rome in April 1942, where he delivered a nine-page document detailing various misdeeds of Pavelić. This document described the atrocities as "anomalies" that were either unknown or unauthorized by Pavelić himself; it is omitted from the ADSS. However, by 1942 the Vatican "preferred to have Stepinac try to rein the fascists in rather than risk the effect that a papal denunciation would have on the unstable Croatian state".
According to Eugene Tisserant
Eugène-Gabriel-Gervais-Laurent Tisserant
Eugène Tisserant was a French Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Elevated to the cardinalate in 1936, Tisserant was a prominent and long-time member of the Roman Curia. He was also, for a time, Grand Master of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre...
, the future Dean of the College of Cardinals, "we have the list of all clergymen who participated in these atrocities and we shall punish them at the right time to cleanse our conscience of the stain with which they spotted us". Pius XII was well-informed of the involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime, but decided against condemning the regime or even taking action against the involved clergy, who had "joined in the slaughter", fearing that it would lead to schism in the Croatian church or undermine the formation of a future Croatian state.
Phayer contrasts the Vatican's "limited and sketchy" knowledge of the genocide in Poland with "the Croatian case, in which both the nuncio and the head of the church, Bishop Alojzje Stepinac, were in continuous contact with the Holy See while the genocide was being committed". Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione instructed nuncio Marcone that "if your eminence can find a suitable occasion, he should recommend in a discreet manner, that would not be interpreted as an official appeal, that moderation be employed with regard to Jews on Croatian territory. Your Eminence should see to it that [...] the impression of loyal cooperation with the civil authorities be always preserved". According to Phayer, the Vatican "preferred to bring diplomatic pressure on the Ushtasha government instead of challenging the fascists publicly on the immorality of genocide".
However, according to Professor Ronald J. Rychlak "Between 1941 and 1944, the Vatican sent four official letters and made numerous oral pleas and protests regarding the deportation of Jews from Slovakia." Rychlak quotes a letter from Pius himself, dated April 7, 1943:
"The Holy See has always entertained the firm hope that the Slovak government, interpreting also the sentiments of its own people, Catholics almost entirely, would never proceed with the forcible removal of persons belonging to the Jewish race. It is therefore with great pain that the Holy See has learned of the continued transfers of such a nature from the territory of the Republic. This pain is aggravated further now that it appears from various reports that the Slovak government intends to proceed with the total removal of the Jewish residents of Slovakia, not even sparing women and children. The Holy See would fail in its Divine Mandate if it did not deplore these measures, which gravely damage man in his natural right, merely for the reason that these people belong to a certain race."Rychlak also states: "The following day, a message went out from the Holy See instructing its representative in Bulgaria to take steps in support of Jewish residents who were facing deportation. Shortly thereafter, the secretary of the Jewish Agency for Palestine met with Archbishop Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) “to thank the Holy See for the happy outcome of the steps taken on behalf of the Israelites in Slovakia." Rychlak adds "In October 1942, a message went out from the Vatican to its representatives in Zagreb regarding the “painful situation that spills out against the Jews in Croatia” and instructing them to petition the government for “a more benevolent treatment of those unfortunates.” The Cardinal Secretary of State’s notes reflect that Vatican petitions were successful in getting a suspension of “dispatches of Jews from Croatia” by January 1943, but Germany was applying pressure for “an attitude more firm against the Jews.” Another instruction from the Holy See to its representatives in Zagreb directing them to work on behalf of the Jews went out on March 6, 1943.
Pavelić audience
Pavelić visited Rome on May 18, 1941 to sign a treaty with Mussolini granting Italy control over several Croatian cities and districts on the Dalmatian coast. While in Rome, he was granted a "devotional" audience with Pius XII. Cornwell views this act as "de facto recognition by the Holy See" of the Independent State of Croatia. Soon afterwards, Abbot Ramiro Marcone was appointed apostolic legate to ZagrebZagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
.
Cornwell is unsure whether the Vatican was aware of the exact atrocities committed by the Ustaše by this point, but he noted "it was known from the very beginning that Pavelic was a totalitarian dictator, a puppet of Hitler and Mussolini, that he had passed a series of viciously racist and anti-Semitic laws, and that he was bent on enforced conversions from Orthodox to Catholic Christianity".
Aftermath
Vatican "ratlines"
According to Phayer, "at the end of the war, the leaders of the Ustasha movement, including its clerical supporters such as Bishop Saric, fled the country, taking gold looted from massacred Jews and Serbs with them to Rome".Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
protected Ante Pavelić
Ante Pavelic
Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader, revolutionary, and politician. He ruled as Poglavnik or head, of the Independent State of Croatia , a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia...
after World War II, gave him "refuge in the Vatican properties in Rome", and assisted in his flight to South America; Pavelić and Pius XII shared the goal of a Catholic state in the Balkans and were unified in their opposition to the rising Communist state under Tito. Pius XII also believed that Pavelić and other war criminals could not get a fair trial in Yugoslavia. After arriving in Rome in 1946, Pavelić used the Vatican "ratline"
Ratlines (history)
Ratlines were a system of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe at the end of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in South America, particularly Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. Other destinations included the United States and perhaps...
to reach Argentina in 1948, along with other Ustaša, Russian, Yugoslav, Italian, and American spies and agents all tried to apprehend Pavelić in Rome but the Vatican refused all cooperation and vigorously defended its extraterritorial status. Pavelić was never captured or tried for his crimes.
According to Phayer, "the Vatican's motivation for harboring Pavelić grew in lockstep with its apprehension about Tito's treatment of the church".
Dozens of Croatian refugees and war criminals were housed in the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome
Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome
The Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome, in Italian the Pontificio Collegio Croato Di San Girolamo a Roma, is a Roman Catholic college, church and a society in the city of Rome intended for the schooling of Croatian clerics. It is named after Saint Jerome...
in Rome. Intelligence reports differed over the location of Pavelić himself. Counter Intelligence Corps
Counter Intelligence Corps
The Counter Intelligence Corps was a World War II and early Cold War intelligence agency within the United States Army. Its role was taken over by the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1961 and, in 1967, by the U.S. Army Intelligence Agency...
agent William Gowen (the son of Franklin Gowen, a US diplomat in the Vatican) was one of those tasked with finding Pavelić; although the CIC hoped the relationship would reveal Pavelić's location, eventually the reverse occurred and the Vatican convinced the US to back off. By the Spring of 1947, the Vatican was putting intense diplomatic pressure on the US and the UK not to extradite Ustaša war criminals to Yugoslavia.
Special Agent Gowen warned in 1947 that, due to Pavelić's record of opposing the Orthodox Church as well as Communism, his "contacts are so high and his present position is so compromising to the Vatican, that any extradition of the subject would be a staggering blow to the Roman Catholic Church". The feared embarrassment of the Church was not due to Pavelić's use of the Vatican "ratline" (which Pavelić at this point, still hoping to return, had not yet committed to using), but rather due to the facts the Vatican believed would be revealed in Pavelić's eventual trial.
Ustaše gold
The Ustaši hiding in Pontifical Croatian College of St. JeromePontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome
The Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome, in Italian the Pontificio Collegio Croato Di San Girolamo a Roma, is a Roman Catholic college, church and a society in the city of Rome intended for the schooling of Croatian clerics. It is named after Saint Jerome...
(the Croatian Seminary near the Vatican) brought a large amount of looted gold with them; this was latter moved to other Vatican extraterritorial property and/or the Vatican Bank
Vatican Bank
The Institute for Works of Religion , commonly known as the Vatican Bank, is a privately held institute located inside Vatican City run by a professional bank CEO who reports directly to a committee of cardinals, and ultimately to the Pope...
. Although this gold would be worth hundreds of thousands of 2008 US dollars, it constituted only a small percentage of the gold looted during World War II
Nazi gold
Nazi gold is the gold transferred by Nazi Germany to overseas banks during the Second World War. The regime executed a policy of looting the assets of its victims to finance the war, collecting the looted assets in central depositories. The occasional transfer of gold in return for currency took...
, mostly by the Nazis. According to Phayer, "top Vatican personnel would have known the whereabouts of the gold".
Surviving victims of the Ustaše and their next of kin living in California brought a class action
Class action
In law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued...
lawsuit against the Vatican bank and others in US federal court, Alperin v. Vatican Bank. Specifically, the Vatican bank was charged with laundering and convering "the Ustaša treasury, making deposits in Europe and North and South American, [and] distributing the funds to exiled Ustaša leaders including Pavelić". A principal piece of evidence against the Vatican is the "Bigelow dispatch", an October 16, 1946 dispatch from Emerson Bigelow in Rome to Harold Glasser
Harold Glasser
Harold Glasser , was an economist in the United States Department of the Treasury and spokesman on the affairs of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration 'throughout its whole life' and he had a 'predominant voice' in determining which countries should receive aid...
, the director of monetary research for the U.S. Treasury Department. Former OSS agent William Gowen has also given deposition
Deposition (law)
In the law of the United States, a deposition is the out-of-court oral testimony of a witness that is reduced to writing for later use in court or for discovery purposes. It is commonly used in litigation in the United States and Canada and is almost always conducted outside of court by the...
as an expert witness
Expert witness
An expert witness, professional witness or judicial expert is a witness, who by virtue of education, training, skill, or experience, is believed to have expertise and specialised knowledge in a particular subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially and legally...
that in 1946 Colonel Ivan Babić
Ivan Babic
Ivan Babić is a Serbian professional football player who currently plays for Serbian SuperLiga club FK Novi Pazar.-Career:...
transported 10 truckloads of gold from Switzerland to the Pontifical College. All charges have been dismissed.
Relations with SFR Yugoslavia
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
(who visited Croatia after the war), "the task of the partisans was made easier in that the clergy as a whole had undoubtedly compromised the church by tolerating the pro-Axis Ustashis, if not actively collaborating with them". Franciscans in particularly were singled out for partisan attacks and fifteen Franciscan monasteries were destroyed.
In this sense, the situation was a microcosm of the general situation of the Vatican in Communist Eastern Europe. Pius XII sent American bishop Joseph Patrick Hurley
Joseph Patrick Hurley
Joseph Patrick Hurley was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of St. Augustine from 1940 until his death in 1967. He also held diplomatic posts in Europe and Asia....
as his envoy to Tito (as Hurley carried the title of "regent", this was a step below official diplomatic recognition). Tito requested to Hurley that Archbishop Stepinac be recalled to Rome; the pope deferred to Stepinac himself, who chose to stay.
Post-war trials
RožmanBishop Gregorij Rožman
Gregorij Rožman
Gregorij Rožman was a Slovenian Roman Catholic clergyman and theologian. Between 1930 and 1959, he served as bishop of the Diocese of Ljubljana. He is most famous for his controversial role during World War II...
of Ljubljana was the first bishop tried for "collaboration
Collaboration
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
" in Yugoslavia, in absentia
In absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...
, by the military court in August 1946. The trial was repealed in 2007 by the Slovene Supreme Court The British occupational authorities had recommended that he "be arrested and interned as a Ustaša collaborator". Phayer views his trial as a "warm-up for proceedings against Stepinac", and after Rožman was convicted, Stepinac was arrested. (Rožman found safe haven in the United States, where he died.)
Stepinac
Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac
Aloysius Stepinac
Aloysius Viktor Stepinac , also known as Blessed Aloysius Stepinac, was a Croatian Catholic cardinal and Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 to 1960. In 1998 he was declared a martyr and beatified by Pope John Paul II....
was indicted on the charges of supporting the Ustaše government, urging forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs, and encouraging Ustaše resistance in Yugoslavia. Phayer argues that Stepinac (who remained silent during his trial) could have defended himself from the charge of supporting forced conversions, but not the other two. Stepinac was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years imprisonment. He served 5 years in the Lepoglava prison
Lepoglava prison
Lepoglava prison is the oldest prison in Croatia. It is located in Lepoglava, Varaždin County, northern Croatia, southwest of Varaždin prison.-History:...
before the sentence was commuted to home arrest.
Pius XII elevated Stepinac to the cardinalate in 1952. Although Phayer agrees in part with criticisms of Stepinac conviction as a "show trial", he states "the charge that he supported the Ustaša regime was, of course, true, as everyone knew", and that "if Stepinac had responded to the charges against him, his defense would have inevitably unraveled, exposing the Vatican's support of the genocidal Pavelić". Most incriminatingly, Stepinac had allowed the state papers of the Ustaše to be stored in his episcopal residence, papers that would be crucial to the Ustaše in retaking control of the country and which contained volumes of incriminating information against Ustaše war criminals.
Stepinac was transferred back home to the village of Krašić
Krašic
Krašić is a village in central Croatia, located near Jastrebarsko and Ozalj, south of Žumberak and north of Kupa, about 50 km southwest of Zagreb. Krašić comprises an area of about 3.63 km²...
in 1953 and died in his residence seven years later. In 1998, Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
beatified
Beatification
Beatification is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a dead person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his or her name . Beatification is the third of the four steps in the canonization process...
him.