Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 26. October 3 1977
Friar O'Sullivan replies to Croatia letters
Friar O'Sullivan replies to Croatia letters
Dear Sir,
I would like to offer some observations on the situation of the Catholic Church in Croatia during World War II. and, specifically, to reply to the letters of Messrs. Beswick, Herrington and Pearce. I invite readers to examine the attitude of the Church to the Croation government, to the German and Italian authorities, to the Serbs, the Jews and the Communists.
Relations with the Croatian Government: Within three weeks of the new government's existince Archbishop Stepinac wrote to Pavelic protesting at some of its practices. He protested that people who were guilty of no personal crime were being sent to concentration camps, that marriages between Jews and Catholics were being forcibly broken up, and that the most essential of all human rights, the right to life, was being violated. He pointed out that these practices were driving people into the hands of the Partisana He knew the origin of these practices, as they were taken directly from Hitler's Germany, commenting "If there is here an interference of a foreign power in internal political life, I am not afraid if my voice and my protest carry even to the leaders of that power".
It was not long before the new government, for its own political reasons, began to try to force Orthodox Serbs to become Catholics. In July 1941 the Archbishop wrote again Pavelic, "No one can deny that terrible acts of violence and cruelty have taken place . . . the Church demands full respect for the human personality without regard for sex, religion, nationality or race, for all men are the children of God and Christ dies for all! The government's reaction to these statements of the Archbishop was to prohibit the printing of his sermons, and to threaten with execution the editor of a Catholic weekly who had printed one of them in defiance of the government order.
If the Archbishop was a supporter of government policy then what did he mean when he went, uninvited, into Pavelic's office and publicly challenged him "It is God's commandment, "Thou shalt not kill' "? Why was it that the Croatian Minister of the Interior complained to Abbot Marcone, the Apostolic Delegate to the Yugoslav Hierarchy, that "Archbishop Stepinac has never uttered a single word to show his adherence to the present government "? Why was it that Pavelic wrote to the Vatican in 1942 asking that "the Archbishop of Zagreb be persuaded to desist from his severe attitude towards us "? Why was it that later, on no less than three occasions, Pavelic asked the Pope to remove Stepinac from office? That hardly suggest complicity between Stepinac and Pavelic.
Relations with the German and Italian Authorities: As early as 1941, Stepinac wrote to Pavelic to complain about the German and Italian armies saying that "many Croatians can no longer tolerate the injustices of the occupation forces ". He wrote to the Italian representative in Zagreb complaining about atrocities committed against Croatians, and, in 1943, after further pressure on the government, he saw some result for his effort in a request from the Croatian government to the Germans to remove one of their divisions from the territory of Croatia.
The BBC, in a radio broadcast in the Serbo-Croat language, made this comment. "In Yugoslavia the Germans are making their persecutions harsher in order to break the courage of the Serbs, Croats and Slovnenes who are fighting for their liberation. According to reports from Zurich, the most recent victims of the Germans are 23 priests whom the Germans have arrested in Dalmatia. The priests referred in their churches to a sermon delivered recently by the Archbishop of Zagreb The priests said that the sermon was in accord with the spirit of the Catholic Church. The arrest of these priests provoked great anger among the people. Their fate in not known, but more serious news is awaited is it possible in view of all this that Archbishop was a Fascist who supported Hitler and Mussolini?
Relations with the Serbs: It is ironic that Stepinac is accused of complicity in the killing of Serbs, when, in 1942, in the government-controlled press of Croatia, he was constantly under attack for being "pro-Serbian". After all, the papers pointed out, he had appealed successfully for the lives of five Serbs condemned to death. What further proof could be needed?
Relations with the Jews: From the earliest days of the Croatian government Stepinac protested at the measures announced against Jews, reminding Pavelic that his own wife was a Jewwss. In a sermon on October 1941, he stated, "All people without exception, whether they belong to the race of gypsies or another, whether they be negroes or Europeans, whether they are detested Jews or proud Aryans, have the same right to say 'Our Father, who art in heaven'. . . . That is why the Catholic Church has always condemned, and condemns today as well, every injustice and every violence committed in the name of the theories of class, race or nationality. .... If the racist theories, which have no foundation, are to be applied without scruple, is there to be any security for any nation at all?........ No one has the right to kill or harm in any way those who beling to another race or nation".
This sermon had a very wide impact, being broadcast by Vatican Radio. The BBC, in a commentary, stated, "In the moral sphere the Axis have been dealt a heavy blow by the highest moral and spiritual power by the medium of the Vatican Radio. This blow was directed against Nazism and against its satellites, of whom Pavelic is one, who must do as they are told. The Archbishop delivered this sermon after the Ustashi government had ordered that the Nuremburg laws be applied to all Jews in the independent state of Croatia .... the most important prelate in Croatia has spoken out against the Ustashi authorities who imitate Nazi crimes. This expression needs no commentary".
Relations with the Communists: Archbishop Stepinac was not s communist and many of his sermons were directed at them no less than at Psvelic and the Ustashi. On more than one occasion he had warned Pavelic that his policies were driving people into the arms of the Communists. Such appeals fell on deaf ears, and Stepinac was himself accused by some of Pavelic's supporters of being a communist. They pointed out that he had called for reallocation of land, and for social reform, and insinuated that since the communists had made similar demands then he must be sympathetic to them. Since he had appealed successfully for clemency for communists awaiting execution, this was further evidence. Since he had taken 400 orphaned children of communist, or allegedly communist, parents into his care, this was more grist for their mill. In reality the alternative to fascism to which Stepinac pointed was not communism but Christianity.
Readers who have preservered in following this correspindence to date may have been struck by the abundance of apparently conflicting evidence. I would suggest to such readers that they re-read the letters of Messrs Beswick, Herrington and Pearce and look at their logic as much as at their history. Following their logic a crime which if carried out by the State in "a Catholic country" is the responsibility of the church Church. The fooishness of this "logic" can be seen clearly today if we look at South America. The majority of people there are Catholic, yet in many South American countries the Church is persecuted because of its support for social reforme and for human rights. Another argument (equally logical) is that if a Bishop receives and/or prays for a State official he thereby approves of his policies, and shares in respinsibility for them. The Pope met Brezhnev in 1967. Does that make him responsible for the Gulag Archipelago, or does it, perhaps, prove that Brezhnev is s Catholic? Another example of this "logic" is in G. Herrington's letter of September 12, where totally unrelated statements are placed together in such a way as to suggest that there is some link between them when. In fact, there is none.
Nonetheless the reader may feel that, with so much smoke around, there must be s bit of fire somewhere. There is. There was one priest whose nationalism was more important to him than his Christianity and who committed murders. He was excommunicated for it. If Bishops and priests had been involved in such crimes on a large scale, as has been suggested, then why would the Bishops, in May 1945, have issued this challenge. "The Catholics Bishops of Croatia are prepared and ready to have each individual case investigated by representatives of other nations and by an international committee. In this way the charge of war criminality will be proven a lie, and simply s means of exterminating those who oppose and want no part of Communism". The offer was not taken up. The last sentence of the Bishops' statement points to something significant. The Church was a thorn in the side of the growing comminist power in Yugoslavia as it had been, to Pavelio also. The Soviet Union and Tito, its ally, wanted to remove or at least discredit this position opposition. What better weapon was there than the charge of collaboration with Fascism? Indeed no sooner had the communists come to power than they began an intensive attack on the Church and particularly on priests. On July 21. 1945. Stepinac wrote to Vladimir Bakaric, President of the People's Republic of Croatia, that, "As statistics show, the clergy is fast disappearing from the surface of free life, either in the prisons or under the bullets of the firing squads What statistics? These were given by the Bishops in a Joint pastoral letter read in the churches on October 1945. They include 240 priests killed. 169 in prison, and 89 listed as missing—all from the diocese of Zagreb alone. At his trial, in September 1946, the Archbishop reported that the number of priests killed by the National Liberation Front was between 260 and 270. The reason is clear enough. The Church opposed (and opposes) communism and fascism, so it was attacked at different times by both groups, simply for the fact of being Christian.
At a glance at the "trial" of Archbishop Stepinac will show how comminist justice works. One of the Commisars of Justice described it, "In our People's Courts the procedure is simple, short and effective without any delays, oral and direct". As Belgrade Radio put it, "It is not important that the judges be professional; it is important that they have democratic ideas and are devoted to the Movement". Under such a legal system, in three days alone, 105 people were sentenced to death in Belgrade, Fourteen of the twenty defence witnesses called by Archbishop Stepinac were disallowed. The other six were allowed, although the judge introduced them by saying that they could not contribute anything to modify the substance of the indictment. Frequently the president of the court and the prosecutor were directing so many questions at Stepinac that he was cut off in mid-sentence. The prosecution lawyer spoke, by actual count, for 48 hours, while the defence lawyer was cut off after 20 minutes on the grounds that he was [ unclear: unduly] prolonging the trial. That was Archbishop's Stepinac's "just" trial at which he was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment.
I will conclude with s quotation from the Serbain Orthodox Bishop. Dionisije Milivojevic, commenting on Stepinac's trial, "This trial was prepared in the political sphere. It was for the prupose of dividing the Catholic Church in Croatia from its leadership at the Vatican. Tito has openly expressed this prupose. The strategy, which definitely comes form the Kremlin in Russia, is to break the leadership of religion. It is to be noted that opposition to atheism is stronger when there is an outside leadership. I refer to the Pope. The trial was not based on justice, it was an outrage of justice. Tito's regime has no interest in justice. It seeks only to stifle opposition"! Readers will note that this statement comes form a leader of those whom the Church is accused of killing by the hundred thousand. It speaks for itself.
I believe that Messrs. Beswick, Herrington and Pearce owe an apology to the memory of Archbishop Stepinac wh6 died, still a prisoner in 1960.
Fr Owen O'Sullivan.
(abridged—ed).