Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše

thumb|right|270px|Archbishop [[Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb meeting with the Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić in 1941]]

thumb|right|270px|Catholic prelates led by Aloysius Stepinac at the funeral of [[Marko Došen, one of the senior Ustaše leaders, in September 1944]]

thumb|right|270px|Serb civilians forced to convert to Catholicism by the [[Ustaše in Glina]]

thumb|right|270px|Execution of prisoners at the [[Jasenovac concentration camp, which was briefly run by a Franciscan military chaplain, Miroslav Filipović, who was stripped of his status by the church but was hanged for his war crimes wearing his clerical garb.]]

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.

Background

For centuries, Croatia had been a part of the Habsburg Empire. A variety of ethnic groups have long existed in the region, and there has been a strong correlation between ethnic identity and religious affiliation, with Croats being mainly Catholic, and more Western-oriented, while the Serbs are Eastern Orthodox. The new Regent Prince, Paul Karadjordjević, was convinced by the success of Vladko Maček's more moderate Croatian Peasant's Party at 1938 elections to grant further autonomy to Croatia. In their military campaign, the Axis forces exploited ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia, and presented themselves as liberators of the Croats. The then-victorious Axis powers set up a puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), which included Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the parts of Dalmatia not annexed to Italy. Deputy prime minister Maček refused to collaborate in a puppet government, and Pavelić's Ustaše was installed in power. In Pavelić, Hitler found an ally. While in Rome, Pius subsequently relented, allowing a half-hour private audience with Pavelić in May 1941. In the 1831 papal bull Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum, Pope Gregory XVI had drawn a clear distinction between de facto recognition and de jure, saying that the church would negotiate with de facto governments, but that was not an endorsement of either their legitimacy or policies. Soon afterwards, Abbot Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone was appointed apostolic legate to Zagreb. The minutes of a meeting, taken by Vatican Under Secretary of State Montini (later Pope Paul VI), noted that no recognition of the new state could come before a peace treaty and that "the Holy See must be impartial; it must think of all; there are Catholics on all sides to whom the [Holy See] must be respectful." In 1941, Pius XII did not send a nuncio, or diplomatic representative, but an apostolic visitor, Benedictine abbot Dom Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone, as representative to the Croatian Catholic Church, rather than the government. Phayer wrote that this suited Pavelić well enough.

Marcone reported to Rome on the deteriorating conditions for Croatian Jews, made representations on behalf of the Jews to Croatian officials, and transported Jewish children to safety in neutral Turkey.

The Vatican used Marcone, together with Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb, to pressure the Pavelić government to cease its facilitation of race murders. When deportation of Croatian Jews began, Stepinac and Marcone protested to Andrija Artuković. In his study of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, Martin Gilbert wrote: "In the Croatian capital of Zagreb, as a result of intervention by [Marcone] on behalf of Jewish partners in mixed marriages, a thousand Croat Jews survived the war." For their part, wrote Phayer, the Vatican hoped the Ustaša would defeat communism in Croatia and that many of the 200,000 who had left the Catholic Church for the Serbian Orthodox Church since World War I would return to the fold.

Clergy involved in Ustaše violence

Mark Biondich notes that "[T]he younger generation of radical Catholics, particularly those of the crusader organisation, supported the Ustaša with considerable enthusiasm, while the older generation of Croat Populists [HSS] was more reserved and in some cases overtly hostile." This generational gap between conservative and radical Catholic priests was further reflected by region (urban vs rural), the geographical location of churches and bishoprics, and an individual priest's relative place within the Church hierarchy. More senior clerics generally disassociated themselves from the NDH. They were also divided by religious orders. The Franciscans, who had resisted for over fifty years Vatican efforts to turn over parishes to secular clergy, were far more prominently associated with the Ustaša than were the Salesians.

Mass murder occurred through the summer and autumn of 1941. The first Croatian concentration camp was opened at the end of April 1941, and in June a law was passed to establish a network across the country, in order to exterminate ethnic and religious minorities. According to writer Richard Evans, atrocities at the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp were "egged on by some Franciscan friars". A particularly notorious example was the Franciscan friar Tomislav Filipović, also known as Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović, known as "Fra Sotona" ("Friar Satan"), "the devil of Jasenovac", for running the Jasenovac concentration camp, where most estimates put the number of people killed at approximately 100,000. According to Evans, Filipović led murder squads at Jasenovac. According to the Jasenovac Memorial Site, "Because of his participation in the mass murders in February 1942 the church authorities excommunicated him from the Franciscan order, which was confirmed by the Holy See in July 1942." He was also required to relinquish the right to his religious name, Tomislav. When he was hanged for war crimes, however, he wore his clerical garb.

Ivan Šarić, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vrhbosna in Sarajevo, supported the Ustaša, in particular the forcible conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Roman Catholicism. His diocesan newspaper wrote: "[T]here is a 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." Šarić appropriated Jewish property for his own use, but was never legally charged. Some priests served in the personal bodyguard of Pavelić, including Ivan Guberina, a leader of the Croatian Catholic movement, a form of Catholic Action. Another priest, Božidar Bralo, served as chief of the security police in Sarajevo, who initiated many anti-Semitic actions.

To consolidate Ustaša party power, much of the party work in Bosnia and Herzegovina was put in the hands of Catholic priests by Jure Francetić, an Ustaše Commissioner of this province. One priest, Mate Mugos, wrote that clergy should put down the prayer book and take up the revolver. Another cleric, Dionysius Juričev, wrote in the Novi list that to kill children at least seven years of age 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."

Sister Gaudencija Šplajt (born Fanika Šplajt) was a Catholic nun sentenced by the Partisan military court in Zagreb on 29 June 1945 to execution by shooting for aiding, harboring, and hiding a German bandit, the notorious Ustaša Tolj, and other Ustaše after the liberation of Zagreb.

Clergy opposed to Ustaše violence

Pavelić told Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop that while the lower clergy supported the Ustaše, the bishops, and particularly Archbishop Stepinac, were opposed to the movement because of "Vatican international policy". Aloysius Mišić, Bishop of Mostar, was a prominent resister. Gregorij Rožman, the bishop of Ljubljana in Slovenia, allowed some Jews who had converted to Catholicism and fled from Croatia into his diocese to remain there, with assistance from the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi in obtaining the permission of the Italian civil authorities.

In Italian-occupied Croatia, Nazi envoy Siegfried Kasche advised Berlin that Italian forces were not willing to hand over Jews and had "apparently been influenced" by Vatican opposition to German anti-Semitism. The intervention of Giuseppe Marcone, Pius XII's Apostolic Visitor to Zagreb, saved a thousand Croatian Jews married to non-Jews.

Archbishop Stepinac denounced atrocities against the Serbs. "[T]his was a secular, not a religious, regime, one that appealed to (and ultimately perverted) centuries-long Croatian traditions of Roman Catholicism to initially legitimate its rule." Croats appropriated many Serbian Orthodox churches as "vacated or requisitioned". The Catholic episcopate and HKP, the Croatian branch of Catholic Action, a lay organization, were involved in the coordination and administration of these policies. Ustaše crimes committed against the Serbian population were generally done so under the pretext of expanding Catholicism in the region.</blockquote>

According to scholar Ronald J. Rychlak:<blockquote>Stepinac, after having received direction from Rome, condemned the brutal actions of the government. A speech he gave on 24 October 1942 stated in part: "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".</blockquote>

Rychlak writes that 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 Pavelić. ... [When] Pavelić traveled to Rome, he was greatly angered because he was denied the diplomatic audience he had wanted", although he enjoyed at least two "devotional" audiences with the pontiff, under whom the Vatican granted Pavelić "de facto recognition" as a "bastion against communism". Phayer wrote that Stepinac came to be known as jeudenfreundlich (Jew friendly) to the Nazis and the Ustaše regime. He suspended a number of priest collaborators in his diocese.

Stepinac declared publicly in mid-1942 that it was "forbidden to exterminate Gypsies and Jews because they are said to belong to an inferior race". When Himmler visited Zagreb a year later, indicating the impending roundup of remaining Jews, Stepinac wrote Pavelić that if this occurred, he would protest for "the Catholic Church is not afraid of any secular power, whatever it may be, when it has to protect basic human values". When the deportations began, Stepinac and papal envoy Giuseppe Marcone protested to Andrija Artuković. According to Phayer, the Vatican ordered Stepinac to save as many Jews as possible during the upcoming roundup. Although Stepinac reportedly personally saved many potential victims, his protests had little effect on Pavelić.

Role of the Vatican

Cornwell considers 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 supporter of Croat nationalism; he hosted a national pilgrimage to Rome in November 1939 for the cause of the canonization of Nikola Tavelić, and largely "confirmed the Ustashe perception of history". In a meeting with Stepinac, Pius XII reiterated the words of Pope Leo X, that the Croats were "the outpost of Christianity", which implied that Orthodox Serbs were not true Christians. Pius XII foretold to Stepinac, "[T]he 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." Yugoslavia was the only post-war Eastern European Communist state which had not been conquered by the Red Army.

According to Eugene Tisserant, 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 Roman Catholic clergy with the Ustaša, but decided against condemning them or even taking action against the involved clergy, who had "joined in the slaughter", fearing it would lead to schism in the Croatian church or undermine the formation of a future Croatian state.

Post-war trials

;Rožman

Bishop Gregorij Rožman of Ljubljana was the first bishop tried for "collaboration" in Yugoslavia, in absentia, by the military court in August 1946. The case was reopened in 2007 by the Slovene Supreme Court and the 1946 verdict was annulled on procedural grounds. The British occupational authorities recommended he "be arrested and interned as a Ustaša collaborator". Phayer views his trial as a "warm-up for proceedings against Stepinac." After Rožman was convicted, Stepinac was arrested. Rožman emigrated to the U.S. sometime after the war and found a haven in the United States through the intercession of influential clerics. He died in the U.S., a legal alien but not a U.S. citizen.

;Stepinac

The Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, was brought to trial by the Yugoslav government on 26 September 1946. Hebblethwaite called it a "showtrial for dramatic effect with the verdict decided in advance, it had nothing to do with justice or evidence."</blockquote>

Stepinac was indicted on charges of supporting the Ustaše government, encouraging forcible conversions of Orthodox Serbs, and encouraging Ustaše resistance in Yugoslavia. He repeatedly refused to defend himself against the charges and was sentenced to sixteen years in prison.

Croatia

The Catholic Church in Croatia is criticised by some for promoting and tolerating neo-fascism among its ranks.

Each year in December, the Catholic church in Croatia holds the annual memorial mass dedicated to Ustasha fascist dictator Ante Pavelić in Zagreb and Split. These masses are known to attract groups of Pavelić's supporters dressed in clothes with Ustasha insignia.

During the funeral of convicted ustasha WWII concentration camp commander Dinko Šakić, priest Vjekoslav Lasić said that "every honest Croat should be proud of Šakić's name" and that "court which convicted Šakić, also convicted Croatia and its people". These statements were strongly condemned by Simon Wiesenthal Center and Croatian Helsinki Committee.

In 2017, Bishop of Sisak Vlado Košić was one of the signatories of a petition for the introduction of the fascist Ustasha movement salute Za dom spremni to the official use in the Croatian Armed Forces. On 1 July, Don Anđelko Kaćunko held a memorial mass for Ustasha Black Legion commander Jure Francetić on which he described Francetić as "a patriot who was willing to give his life for the homeland". On 2 July, media published a picture of a Croatian Catholic priest posing for a picture with a group of young boys on a children's football tournament in Široki Brijeg, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their team was named "The Black Legion" and boys were all wearing black T-shirts, thus alluding to notorious ustasha militia of the same name. On 2 September, while holding a mass near the town of Sinj, friar Božo Norac Kljajo equalized Za dom spremni and Praised be Jesus by saying that these are "both good intentioned, human and ancient Christian salutes which don't hold a single drop of hate or vengeance."

Upon the death of Slavko Goldstein in September 2017, a prominent Croatian writer and publisher of Jewish origin, Mili Plenković, pastor of Hvar, published a Facebook post in which he expressed that he was "happy upon hearing the news that Goldstein died" because according to him: "yet another hater of Croatia vanished from this world".

Notable people

Krunoslav Draganović (1903–1983), Catholic priest, organized Ratlines.
Tomislav Filipović-Majstorović (1915–1946; born Miroslav Filipović), Franciscan friar and Jasenovac camp commander infamous for his sadism and cruelty, known as "brother Satan". Captured by Partisans, tried and executed in 1946.
Petar Brzica (1917–?), Franciscan friar who won a contest on 29 August 1942 after cutting the throats of 1,360 inmates at the Jasenovac concentration camp. His post-war fate is unknown.

References

Sources

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;Conference papers