Continued from Chapter VIII. Final Attempt to Save the Monster.

IT IS UNDENIABLE that Pavelic up until his death was protected by the Vatican and that even on his deathbed he received the papal blessing. Pope Pius XII and Stepinac always considered him a practicing Catholic. Therefore he and his Ustashi were protected and are still being protected by the Vatican, because of their devotion to the Roman Catholic Church, despite the odious crimes they committed.

Mr. Jean Hussard, a witness of the bloody tragedy which lasted four years in satellite Croatia, wrote shortly before the end of the war:

Since these lines were written, the prediction they contained has been fully realized. The Serbs converted to Catholicism “without the slightest pressure of the civil and religious authorities,” as the Osservatore Romano expressed it, these 240,000 neophytes who represented entire villages suddenly enlightened by the “truths of Catholic faith,” returned to Orthodoxy.

At that time, Jean Hussard still doubted whether the Vatican would have deliberately consented to this proselytism through the terror practiced by the Croatian bishops, the priests and other religious officials. Thus he wrote: “By a clever manipulation of figures, perhaps they made the supreme head of Christian thought believe that the Serbs who had transferred to Catholicism were poor miserable people who had been spared death.” Ibid., p. 216.

This was an excuse which, until the end of the drama, was often made by official spokesmen of the Holy See, but by them only.

As to the methods of terror which were used in order to obtain results, it has been shown how the Ustashi and missionaries worked together. Among overwhelming numbers of testimonials only a few have been cited, but they suffice in wiping away all doubt, and it is beyond dispute, that the Holy Father could not have been ignorant of what was going on, for even in Italy the newspapers never hesitated printing texts, such as the following, in their columns.

His Grace Marcone, the “apostolic visitor” personally representing the Holy Father was present furthermore, and his cordial and even intimate relationship with Pavelic is in itself significant. Krunoslav Draganovic, member of the committee for the conversions, and chaplain at the concentration camp of Jasenovac, was a liaison agent between the Archbishop of Zagreb and the Vatican. His Grace Stepinac went twice to Rome during the war. The state secretariat possessed photograph albums of the massacres and massive conversions. The words of His Grace Tisserant have already been quoted but, in addition, the words which His Grace Montini, under secretary of state, addressed to Rusinovic, and which the envoy of the Ustashi government to the Vatican noted, can now be read: “Right at the beginning of the conversation he asked: ‘What is happening in Croatia which is causing such alarm all over the world? Is it true that crimes have been committed, and has the treatment of those deported been so terrible?’ ” Nikola Rusinovic, Official Report, February 4, 1942. See supplement of Tajni Dokumenti for photocopy.

Protestations from everywhere were raining down on the Vatican; from all the allied governments and from important personalities in the rest of the world. As for the Yugoslav government-in-exile, it tried several different times, through its legation, to ask the Holy See to intercede in Croatia and stop the massacres and forced conversions. The legation even sent a protest on January 9, 1942 (Note 1/42) against the formation of committees for conversion. The following is a report concerning this demand from Serbia: “Dr. Prvislav Grisogono sent a letter to Dr. Ujcic, the Archbishop of Belgrade, in which he appealed to the Archbishop to ask the Pope to use all possible means to stop the massacres. In his reply, Dr. Ujcic said: ‘I thank you for your letter. The information about the massacres we have already received from many different sources. I have forwarded everything to the Vatican and I believe that everything possible will be done.’” David Martin, Ally Betrayed (New York, 1946), p. 59.

But doing “everything possible” ended in doing nothing at all. If only the sovereign pontiff had interceded efficaciously in Catholic Croatia, Pavelic and his executioners would have had to listen and the great tragedy would have been avoided or, at least, attenuated.

When the Ustashi, David Spincic, was given an audience by the Pope on July 9, 1943, Pavelic’s emissary at Rome, Erwein Lobkowicz, sent the following report to the minister of foreign affairs: “It is very significant that he received the invitation for this audience as a Minister.”

Wasn’t this an implicit recognition of the Ustashi government?

In order to judge the attitude of the Vatican toward the Ustashi government, the report which Pavelic’s attaché at Rome, Nikola Rusinovic, made May 9, 1942, is most revealing:

Following the instructions of the Vatican, Pavelic’s government hastened to publish the Gray Book in which all the Ustashi crimes were laid to General Mihailovic and the resistance forces in general.

It could have been thought that this attitude was prompted by opportunism, and that once the storm was over, the voice of God’s Vicar would rise up to denounce, even retrospectively, these incredible horrors. People who had nourished this hope were cruelly disappointed.

The Croatian episcopacy, before the general indignation, felt obliged for the first time since 1941 to reprove the criminal acts of a part of the clergy, in its pastoral letter of September 20, 1945: “We admit that there were some priests who, misled by national and partisan passion, sinned against the holy law of Justice and Christian charity, and who, for that reason, must answer for their acts before the courts of earthly justice.” Cashiers du Nouveau Monde (Paris, 1945), vol. II, No. 6.

The author is aware of Tito’s persecutions of all churches in Communist Yugoslavia, but when the Yugoslav government, as any government would have done in any other country, decided to punish those who are guilty of war crimes, the Vatican tried to sway world public opinion by describing this act of justice as “religious persecution.” This attempt was in large part successful. “Among the simple people, this purging of those who had fought side by side with the Germans against the Serbs, and whose acts of cruelty were legendary, was considered as anti-Catholic persecution.” Informations catholiques Internationales (Paris), October 15, 1955.

The same stubbornness in denying the evidence was discovered in the protests, tardy though it was (appearing only in 1953), made by the Vatican for the first time. Harassed by the accusations of the Yugoslav government, it attempted to exonerate the Catholic Croatian hierarchy. As the Osservatore Romano wrote: “It is a disgraceful falsehood; and it is absolutely not true that the Catholic bishops approved of the monstrosities committed by the Ustashi regime. On the contrary, they were condemned publicly as were the forced conversions, that being their apostolic and humanitarian duty. They reproached Pavelic for the monstrosities and the crimes which polluted his regime, and they also rose up against the racism of the invader.” Osservatore Romano, May 81, 1958.

Such a statement seems like an aberration. Just where and when did the author, or inspirer, of these lines ever hear of a bishop “publicly condemning” Ustashi crimes at the time they were being committed? One thing is certain, there was no mention of it in the Katolicki List, Nedelja or in any other episcopal publication, always overflowing with praise for the Poglavnik’s cleverness.

It was, however, a Catholic author who, in his book, A Church of Silence, recalled the Vatican’s principles: “Even the hierarchic and supernational constitution of the Catholic church forbids the Holy See to allow its priests to evade its authority and go to work for the state or the government.” Une Eglise du Silence Catholiques en Yougoslavie (Brussels, 1954), p. 88.

It has been observed that the most sacred canonic prescriptions were not respected in regard to sincerity and freedom of thought concerning the conversions. The Holy See gladly accepted His Grace Stepinac occupying a seat in the Ustashi parliament, accompanied by a bishop and nine other priests. Lenience was also shown to all associates who could add prestige to positions such as prefects or chiefs of police in the Usteshi government, while retaining sacerdotal responsibilities. The same was true for His Grace Tiso in Slovakia, the first purveyor of the Auschwitz. What opinion could one draw of such “tolerance” except that the priests, in accepting government positions, did so without escaping from the jurisdiction of the Holy See which had not only granted them permission, but given them a mission as well.

This and the following pictures show what Pavelic, Artukovic (now living in Los Angeles) and other Ustashi left behind when they fled the country. Bodies are lined up for identification (Gudovac, near Bjelovar).

Ustashi escorting girls and women to the concentration camps.

Where will they go? The Ustashi led them to concentration camps, or threw them alive in deep pits or off steep precipices. Regardless of the manner—sure death for all of them.

More Serbian women and children, labeled as enemies of the State of Croatia, being taken to concentration camps, where they died of starvation, or were killed.

This mother with her six children, considered as great enemies of the State of Croatia, were sent to a concentration camp by Andrija Artukovic.

The forcible proselytism of Orthodox Serbs in a village of in the county of Bosanka Dubica.

Vlaho Margetic, Franciscan, forcibly proselytizing Orthodox Serbs.

Another picture of Margetic in action.

Slavko Kvaternik (Second from left), Vojskovodja, (marshal) of Pavelic’s Independent State of Croatia among high ranking German military officers. He declared the Independence of Croatia on April 10, 1941, under the protection of the German Army which captured Zagreb on the same day. The Croatian paper, Danica, of Chicago, Illinois, defending Kvaternik, wrote as follows on May 7, 1958: “Poor martyred Kvaternik! We must defend him for he gave his life for our fatherland. We must defend his stand as a Fifth Columnist and as a Collaborator [Nazi]. To attack him now is to follow the Partisan line, He was a great |Ustashi] fighter for Croatia and no strangers are now going to blacken his name.”

The Croat Catholic Press in service to Ustashi regime.

Dr. Alois Stepinac, Archibishop of Zagreb, shown wearing the Ustashi decoration, together with his personnel, bringing New Year greetings to Ante Pavelic.

Ante Pavelic surrounded by Croatian Catholic clergy in April, 1942.

Pavelic among Croatian Franciscans.

“Once an Ustasha—Ustasha until death.”
Ustashi raise three fingers as they are sworn to loyalty. Andrija Artukovic (center).

Nuns marching together with Croatian nazi-legionnaires (Ustashi).

Catholic Ustasha ridicules Serbian Orthodox religion with stole taken from village home after killing the occupant, a Serbian priest.

The absence of all blame can thus be easily explained, as well as the simple call to order in regard to the ecclesiastics who had been the most compromised. The priests who had been denounced by Rev. Svetozar Rittig continued to officiate in the temples of God. The notorious executioner of Jasenovac, the ignominious Filipovic-Majstorovic, went to mass every day up until the time of his arrest, and he was hung while wearing his clerical robes. No one has ever heard of the 500 religious officials who fled in Pavelic’s convoy being subjected to sanctions. Even the Poglavnik and his principal collaborationist succeeded in procuring restful retreats under the protection of the Assistance Commission for “Political Refugees.”

Therefore, there can be no misunderstanding concerning His Grace Stepinac’s promotion to a “cardinalcy,” for this was a “just reward for his distinguished merits.” Mr. Jules Moch, former French prime minister, in his book entitled, Yugoslavia, reports on the inquiries he made when he was there. Among many others, he recounts the well-known story about the Archbishop of Zagreb: “He allowed frightful massacres without ever raising his voice in protest, and he always defended the Ustashi regime,” a Croatian Catholic told us after he had accompanied us to a Dalmatian Church where, after sprinkling himself with Holy water and kneeling before the altar, he added: “He was hated by the Catholic patriots.” Jules Moch, Yougoslavie (Monaco 1953), p. 155.

Mr. Francois Fejto, the great expert on southeastern Europe wrote: “From 1939 to 1941, the Vatican witnessed, with satisfaction, the founding of small fascist states favorable to the influence of the church and built on the ruins of heretical Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, preponderantly Orthodox. His Grace Tiso was never repudiated by the Holy See, although many non-communist Czechs and Slovaks considered him a traitor. In the case of Stepinac, shouldn’t the Mihailovic government have asked him to give an account of his conduct during the war? Stepinac had given his benediction to the Ustashi units .. . and with several other members of the episcopacy he had presided over the committee for the conversion of the Orthodox to Catholicism. Stepinac symbolized, to a maximum degree, Croatian clerical chauvinism which could never be resigned to the formation of a Yugoslav State. . . .” Francois Fejto, Histoire des Democraties Populaires (Paris 1952), pp. 360-370.

It is timely to refer to the English writer, Avro Manhattan, who describes Croatian separatism before the war: “Croat separatism became an increasingly important factor as the internal and external tension grew. Its identification with Catholicism made it almost a blind tool of the Catholic hierarchy, and thus of the Vatican, which unhesitatingly used it to further, not only its local interests, but also its vaster Balkan schemes of religio-political domination.” Avro Manhattan, op. cit., p. 36.

An officious opus published in 1943 by Dr. Ivan Guberina, then professor at the Faculty of Theology in Zagreb, contains the following passage: “The true expression of a new Croatia resides in Catholic-Christian principles and not in a few deplorable acts of unworthy individuals.” ^* It would be difficult to express more clearly and in fewer words the attitude of the Croatian Catholic church and the obstinate silence of the Holy See before the “deplorable acts” of these “unworthy individuals,” many of whom were nothing else but the “dare-devil fanatics” in ecclesiastical ranks mentioned so offhandedly by the Archbishop of Zagreb. Laconically speaking, “the end justifies the means.”

*La formation catholique de la Croatie (collection Croatia Sancta, Rome, 1948). Officium Libri Catholici (with ecclesiastic approval) Zagreb, October 22, 1948, No. 1089-48, prefaced by Cardinal Fumasoni Biondi.

However, the Vatican that knew so well how to keep silent before the horrors of the Ustashi regime, was not so taciturn in other circumstances. In 1952, in his encyclical letter Orientales Ecclesias, Pius XII vigorously stigmatized the death penalty of the Catholic bishop, Monsignor Bossilkoff, of Nicopolis, in Bulgaria, and three other priests, and condemned, as well, the vexations inflicted upon numerous ecclesiastics and religious followers. “We consider it a duty of conscience,” said the Sovereign Pontiff,” to protest against these acts before all Christianity. For us this is an occasion of such profound sadness that we cannot check our tears.”

Certainly the condemnations and the vexatious measures of a political regime are deeply regrettable, but neither by their motives nor by their importance can they be compared to the atrocious persecutions to which the Serbian Orthodox and their church were subjected in satellite Croatia. The Holy Father, however, had not considered it “a duty of conscience” to protest to “all Christianity” against these monstrous crimes, and he never shed a tear for the 750,000 victims exterminated by the very Catholic Poglavnik.

How would it be possible to forget the menacing words uttered in 1937 by his predecessor, Pius XI, at the Consistory after the Yugoslav Concordat had been rejected, and which were published in the Osservatore Romano: “The day will come when there will be many who will regret not having accepted fully, generously and efficaciously the great blessing offered to their country by Christ’s Vicar… .”

Among the numerous “Letters from the Readers” addressed to the newspaper Le Monde in Paris, the one written by Mr. Andre Barnaud, pastor of the Reformed Church, should also be cited:

In the issue of Le Monde dated Sunday and Monday, the twelfth and thirteenth, you devoted a short article to the religious persecutions which occurred during the pontificate of Pius XII and which included a list of the countries, established by the Vatican, where the persecutions had taken place.

As Protestants, we now feel a profound compassion for our Catholic brothers who are overcome by sorrow, and I should have preferred that during these days of mourning no mention had been made.

But since the Vatican has issued a list I feel obliged, in the name of Truth, to point out that this list, alas, is far from complete. The Vatican seems to have forgotten an appreciable number. Here, below, are a few others, briefly mentioned, without any reference to the details which were sometimes extraordinarily cruel:

1. Twenty thousand Spanish protestants are being mistreated if not cruelly persecuted by the Catholic church.

2. The clergy and Catholic masses in Colombia (South America) a few years ago organized bloody persecutions of the Protestants.

3. In Croatia, during the last war, the Ustashi Catholics massacred thousands of Orthodox Serbs.

To my knowledge no official voice has yet risen up from the very bosom of the sister Church to express any regret or to condemn and put an end to such horrors. This silence, for which some have reproached the last Pope, seems to us particularly significant as well as incomprehensible.

Are we never to hear this voice? Le Monde, October 21, 1958.

We wonder if Pope Pius XII, though belatedly, became aware of his omission to condemn the religion of bloodshed, along with Hitlerism and Ustashism as well as some of his other errors which made such a deep breach in the anticommunist front?

Furthermore, there is a passage, following his last will, in which Pope Pius XII added something more than just “une clause de style,” (a style clause) in which he expresses remorse regarding his own personal attitude and silence concerning all the events and horrors previously described in this volume: “I humbly request the pardon of those whom I may have offended, harmed, or scandalized by words or deeds.” La Croix, October 12-18, 1958.

The world press, at the deathbed of Pius XII, did not fail to refer to his silence regarding the persecutions that have marked our era with shame.

As Mr. Jean d’Hospital wrote in Le Monde:

A shadow of uneasiness darkens the memory of Pope Pius XII. We must now ask ourselves, without further delay, and thus bring into the open, a question which many people in every nation, and even within the walls of the Vatican, have been noting on their secret tablets during these past years: did he really know about certain horrors of the war, imposed and carried out under Hitler’s orders?

Pope Pius XII had had ample time to read the periodical reports of all the bishops addressed to him from every corner of the world, compiled by the priests who had listened to the confessions in their respective dioceses. How, therefore, could he have remained unaware of what the big German military leaders pretended to ignore; namely the tragedy of the concentration camps, the massacre of enemy military prisoners executed cold-bloodedly, and the terror of the gas chambers where droves of Jews were administratively exterminated?

If he had been aware of all this, why, as guardian and first speaker of the Gospel, did he not go out on the public square, and, clothed in his white robes, his arms crossed, raise his voice in protest? He never explicitly, forcefully, and definitely denounced Hitler’s religion of bloodshed. It is not necessary to exhume all the grandiose pontifical interventions for it would be quite futile. We should not find that for which we were seeking. Le Monde, October 10, 1958.

Continued in Chapter X. Ustashi in the Free World

All chapters of Genocide in Satellite Croatia 1941-1945 by Edmond Paris

Download a PDF file of this article.

Please follow and like us: