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Part IV MURDERERS’ HOUR
CHAPTER I MONSEIGNEUR STEPINAC’S CROATIA

DISMEMBERMENT of Yugoslavia by Hitler and Mussolini. Creation of a Croat satellite state. — Retrospect: the Vatican’s hostility towards the Yugoslav Government. Threats uttered by Pope Pius XI in 1937. — Ante Pavelitch, Chief of the Ustashis, murderer of King Alexander I and of Louis Barthou, is in the pay of Italy. Beginning of the massacre of the Serbs in Croatia. Pavelitch, leader of the murderers, received in great pomp by Pope Pius XII. — Under the sign of the Cross: the Ustashi Government proclaims:”We will kill some of the Serbs, deport others, and the remainder shall be obliged to embrace the Roman Catholic religion”. — Atrocities assume appalling proportions. Catholic priests preach the massacre of the Orthodox and Jews. — The sons of Gentle St. Francis: Franciscan and Jesuit monks march at the head of the assassins and take part in the killing. — The concentration camp of Jasenovac and its Chief, the Franciscan brother FilipovitchMajstorovitch: mass throat-cutting; the special knife; the”throatcutting competition”. — The Ustashis’ gift to their Chief Ante Pavelitch: twenty kilogrammes of human eyes. — The martyrdom of Orthodox bishops. Mgr. Platon shod like a horse. — Mgr. Stepinac, Catholic Archbishop of Zagreb, main pillar of the Paveliteh Government. Thousands of overwhelming statements, photographs and testimonies. Gold, stolen from the victims, hidden in the Archiepiscopal Palace. After the defeat of the Germans, the flight of the Ustashis and of 500 priests and monks who had taken part in the massacres. The fugitives welcomed and hidden in convents in Austria, in Italy . . . and even in Paris. The Vatican in the face of the Ustashi terror: no reproach. Ante Pavelitch, the”practising” Catholic, is covered with blessings by Pius XII. Father Marcone, Legate of the Holy See, rules with Mgr. Stepinac over all official ceremonies. — The”humanitarian”zeal of the Roman Catholic Church ia Croatia, in Slovakia and even in the Philippines. — Mgr. Stepinac decorated with the”Grand Cross and Star”by the Ustashi Government. — For his part, Plus XII rewards Mgr. Stepinac with the title of Cardinal. — Astonishing impudence of His Holiness’s thurifers. — Subject of a conference held at University College, Cardiff:”Should the Pope be tried as a war criminal?”— Today. — The Confession.

THE preceding pages have already brought proof after proof of the Vatican’s unlimited support of Hitler and Mussolini in their undertaking to dominate Europe, and there is little cause to be surprised by this when one has studied the identical method by which it raised first one and then the other to power and thus created its agents. We have seen how the Catholic hierarchy was placed under the orders of the Fuhrer and how, through devious Jesuistic wiles, the”doctrine”was rendered more flexible until it became the humble servant of Nazism. We have even seen, in Slovakia, one of His Holiness’s prelates, Mgr. Tiso, raised—with the blessing of the Holy Father—to the rank of Chief of a puppet state and a Reich satellite; and we have also seen this prince of the Roman Church become the first supplier for Auschwitz.

Surely such examples of criminal complicity could hardly be surpassed. Yet they were, in Yugoslavia, when Mussolini and Hitler, having made themselves masters of the country, proceeded to carve out the State of Croatia.

The Vatican was then to unmask itself as it had never dared to do before. It is true that all this happened in 1941, when it was feeling certain of victory. Not only was the extermination of the Orthodox Christians and the Jews organized as an institution of the Croatian State, under the approving eye of the many members of the Catholic clergy who sat in the Ustashi Parliament but from their pulpits priests encouraged and gave their blessing to the murderers. There were monks, Franciscans and Jesuits, who led these assassins and exhorted them to murder, brandishing the cross in one hand and the”mauser”or cut-throat’s knife in the other.

The Inquisition, as we shall soon see, was a feeble instrument compared with the horrors that were now to be perpetrated by the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church.

It will be recalled that in 1941 Yugoslavia was invaded and dismembered by Hitler and Mussolini. The Germans and Italians shared Slovenia and Dalmatia; the northern part of the country, Voi’vodiaa, was ceded to Hungary; the southern part (Kossovo) to Albania; and Macedonia to Bulgaria. Along with Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Srem were turned into a Fascist satellite state: the so-called Independent State of Croatia. At its head was placed Ante Pavelitoh, Chief of the Croatian Fascists: the Ustashis”. This name has a sinister sound and indeed, during the inter-war period it was heard all too often, first in connexion with numerous murders in Yugoslavia, then in 1934, when followers of this terrorist gang assassinated King Alexander I and Louis Barthou (the French Foreign Minister) in Marseilles.”Mussolini’s Government having clear connections with the instigators of the crime . . . as Francois Charles-Roux reminds us, the French Government vainly requested the extradition of Ante Paveliteh who had taken refuge in Italy.

This gangleader was indeed working for Italy, which was pursuing its traditional policy of expansion along the Adriatic Coast; and, of course, the Vatican was equally interested in the success of this policy.

Even when this territory was still only one of the badly-assembled units of the Habsburg Empire, its Catholic-Orthodox duality was a sore spot in the ancient monarchy.

Herve Lauriere describes the situation in a well-documented and excellent work, which will often be quoted in this chapter:

“While the majority of Croatians are Catholic, the Serbs belong to the Orthodox religion. Thus, in the eyes of Rome, they are schismatics. . . . It is appropriate here to recall the extent of AustriaHungary’s efforts over two centuries, particularly during the reign of Maria Theresa, to convert the Serbs to Croatism via”Catholicism. Order, in Austria-Hungary, rested upon political clericalism and the remaining vestiges of the feudal system. . . . This is what Count de Saint-Aulaire, former French Ambassador to Vienna wrote: •In the official circles of Vienna hatred and contempt of the Serbs was a new commandment of God and the best obeyed of them all’.

“In Croatia it was the Jesuits who implanted political clericalism. . . . With the death of its great democratic leader, Raditch, Croatia has lost its principal opponent to political clericalism and it will now become attached to the Catholic Action movement as the latter is defined by Friedrich Muckennann. This German Jesuit, famous even before Hitler’s day, made it known in 1928 through a book prefaced by Mgr. Pacelli, then Apostolic Nuncio in Berlin. Mnckermann wrote: tThe Pope is calling for a new Catholic Action crusade. He is the guide who bears the flag of the Kingdom of Christ. . . . Catholic Action is sounding the assembly of world Catholicism. It must live its time of heroism . . . the new era can be won only at the price of bloodshed for Christ.'”

This “blood for Christ” was soon to flow in torrents in a Europe temporarily subjected to the henchmen of the Holy See, and particulariy in the unfortunate country of Yugoslavia, which was not in the good graces of the Vatican, as Frangois Charles-Roux5 testifies:

“When I arrived in Rome, in June 1932, Yugoslavia’s relations with the Holy See certainly left much to be desired. … On another occasion, it was the Pope who refused to receive a Yugoslav parliamentary delegation, headed by the President of the Chamber, Kumanudi. Yet Pope Pius XI was receiving pilgrims from Croatia, who were coming to the Vatican in a very definite spirit of provincial particularism … he called them his ‘sons of Croatia’…. I addressed the Vatican as follows: ‘Everyone in the outside world is convinced that you are unfriendly towards Yugoslavia because the Italians are ill-disposed towards her. Prove your independence of Italy by maintaining closer relations with Yugoslavia’.

There had been a draft concordat in 1937, which never amounted to anything. It was after this failure that Pope Pius XI, during the consistory of 16 December 1937, uttered the following words, pregnant with meaning, which were published the next day in his official paper, the Osservatore Romano:

The day will come . . . pursued His Holiness — and though he would have preferred not to say it, it had to be said — the day will come when many will be sorry not to have openly and generously accepted the great gift which the Vicar of Jesus Christ was offering their country. . . .”

The threat was as transparent as it was prophetic. Less than four years later this unhappy country was to learn with blood, terror and tears, the price of daring to resist the will of he who calls himself the Vicar of Christ.

“On 18 May 1941, at the head of a Croatian delegation Ante Pavelitch went to Rome to present to the Emperor and King of Italy, Victor-Emmanuel III, a petition in which he was offering the crown of Zvonimir to a prince of the House of Savoy. . . . The Duke of Spoleto received the title of Tomislav II. …

“The same day”, Herve Lauriere continues, “Pope Pius XII granted a private audience to Pavelitch and his suite. . . . From the Vatican, Pavelitch had but a short distance to travel that evening, to reach the Palace of Venice, where Mussolini was awaiting him. There, the two accomplices signed a treaty delimiting Italy and Croatia, whereby Italy was assigned the Croatian coast, northern Dahnatia, and all the large islands of the Adriatic, as well as the Port of Kotor (Cattaro).

“Thus incorporated in the Axis, Paveliteh had but to declare war upon the United States when this country joined the Allies, in December 1941. …

“Referring to the Serbs when speaking to the Ustashi army, at Zagreb, Pavelitch dared assert that ‘he who could not cut away a child from his mother’s womb is not a good Ustashi‘.

Such was the man—if he can be called such—to whom Pope Pius XII had just granted the favour of a private audience. Thus the Holy Father did not shrink from shaking hands with an avowed assassin, condemned to death in his absence for the murder of King Alexander I and of Louis Barthou; with a gang-leader accused of the most horrible crimes. Indeed, on 18 May 1941, when Pope Pius XII received Ante Pavelitch and his band of killers with all due honour, the massacre of the Orthodox was already in full swing in Croatia, concurrently with the forced conversions to Catholicism. Let us once more see what Herve Lauriere9 has to say on the subject:

“On 28 April 1941, in the middle of the night, several hundred Ustashis encircled the Serbian villages of Gudovac, Tuke, Brezovac, Klokocevac and Bolac, in the district of Bjelovar. They arrested 250 peasants, among whom were Priest Bozin and the schoolteacher Stevan Ivaakovitch. The women were sobbing, for they had understood why the villagers had been ordered to take along picks and shovels. Their column, flanked by Ustashis, slowly left the village and stopped in front of a field.

—”Dig your grave!”

“The powerlessness and resignation of these wretched people were such that they obeyed. Their hands were tied behind their backs with wire, before they themselves were thrown into the pit which they had dug, and buried alive. . . . The same night, near Vukovar, on the banks of the Danube, other Ustashis cut the throats of another 180 Serbs and threw their bodies into the river. … We now come to the town of Dvor n/Uni. The Ustashis there had as their commanding officer the Roman Catholic Priest Ante Djuritch, priest in charge of the Commune of Divusa. From the outset this ecclesiastic took on the district’s administration, had the officials swear allegiance, recruited the bands of torturers and instructed them in the art of forcibly converting the Serbian Orthodox to Catholicism and of doing away with those who might resist.

“In the town of Otocac, the Ustasshi officer Ivan Sajfer arrested the Orthodox priest and Serbian Deputy, Branko Dobrosavljevitch, together with his son and 331 other Serbs. Faithful to a well-tried technique, the criminal ordered the victims to dig their grave, tied their hands behind their backs and had them executed by hatchet. The priest and his son were the last to be killed, with the atrocious refinement that the child was cut into pieces in front of his father, who was forced to recite the prayers of the dying. No sooner had the child breathed his last, than the brutes assailed the father, tearing out hair, beard, skin and eyes, and only killing him after they had tortured him for a long while.”

Priest or layman, the apologist of Pope Pius XII may quibble as much as he likes: the facts are there and the dates speak for themselves. We have just seen how the “converting” Ustashis were behaving three weeks before their General Staff was to be received in great pomp at the Vatican. It should be added that the”Decree concerning the conversion from one religion to another”was published by the Ustashi Government on 3 May, fifteen days before Ante Pavelitch called upon the Holy Father.

Rome was perfectly well acquainted with these facts:

“At that time, certain Roman Catholic periodicals had not hesitated to encourage him (Ante Pavelitch) and to excuse his crimes and his massacres of innocent men, women and children. . . . In the very early days, the Ustashis killed five Orthodox bishops and about one hundred priests. . . . The entire property of the Orthodox Church was confiscated. The patriarchal palace was requisitioned and put at the disposal of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Under the sign of the Cross

Walter Hagen describes the horrors of that occupation:

“It had never been doubted that the Catholic Church in Croatia was exercising its all-powerful influence over the people, with a view to a Croatian autonomy. . . . Already the averment of the Catholic Credo was tantamount to Croatian national propaganda. . . . Germany had her hands tied, so far as the whole Yugoslav question was concerned. For Yugoslavia belonged to the sphere of Italian interests. . . . The Duce made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was awaiting the opportune moment to place Yugoslavia entirely under his thumb. . . . Ciano promised Pavelitch that he and his Ustashis would have complete power over an independent Croatian state … the military policy of Croatia would be directed exclusively towards Italy; Croatia would be closely united to her neighbour by a dynastic tie (an Italian prince would occupy .the Croatian throne). . . .

“Croatia was proclaimed an Independent State on 10 April 1941. . .. Within a very short while, the country was, thanks to the Ustashis, nothing but a chaos of blood. . . . The new masters were directing their mortal hatred against the Jews and the Serbs who were, for all intents and purposes, officially outlawed. The most violent persecutor of Jews was Secretary of State Eugen Kvaternik-Dido. . . .”

Here is further evidence:

“At his first press conference, Mile Budak, Minister of Education, when interviewed by a journalist on the possible measures to be taken by the Ustashi Government against the Serbian minorities, replied: ‘We have three million bullets for them’. The same Budak added at a banquet given in the town of Gospitch: ‘We will kill some of the Serbs, deport others, and the remainder shall be forced to embrace the Roman Catholic religion.’ Dr. Mirko Puk, Minister of Justice, at a political meeting in the town of Krizevci, declared, on 5 July 1941: ‘We cannot allow the Serbs to live in Croatia. There is one God and one nation—the Croatian nation’.

“At the beginning of May 1941”, writes Herve Lauriere, “the commanding officer of Banja Luka, a certain Viktor Gutitch, undertook a journey across the whole of western Bosnia. As soon as he arrived in the town of Savski-Most, he hastened to publish his programme: ‘The roads,’ he declared, ‘will be there, but there will be no Serbs left to use them. I have, indeed, given strict instructions for their complete extermination. I authorize you to exterminate the Serbs wherever you come across them, and you will be blessed for this action. . . . This is how I wish to serve the Will of God as well as that of our Croatian people’.”

According to Walter Hagen: “As early as the summer of 1941, these atrocities were assuming unparalleled proportions. Entire villages, for example Voynitch, even entire regions, were systematically wiped out. . . . Since ancient tradition required that Croatia and Catholicism on the one hand, and Serbia and the Orthodox religion on the other, be synonymous, the Orthodox Christians were forced to enter the Catholic Church. Indeed, these obligatory conversions constituted the culmination of ‘Croatization’.”

More evidence:

Herve Lauriere tells us of a downright butchery:”A veritable religious war became the pretext for massacres and for a genocide unparalleled in history. To abjure in favour of Croatian Catholicism, to disown one’s land and the beliefs of one’s forefathers, to be converted by force or die—and all too often to be executed after having become a renegade—such was the lot of many hundreds of thousands of Serbian inhabitants of Croatia, between 1941 and 1945.

“In June 1941, within a few days, more than one hundred thousand men, women and children were either killed or tortured and massacred in their homes, on the roads, in the fields, the prisons and the schools and even in their Orthodox churches. . . . The following are two testimonies of these atrocities. The first is the confession of one of their perpetrators, the Ustashi Hilmia Berberovitch. … He supplied the Belgrade police with the following description of the massacre in which he took part, in the Serbian Orthodox Church of Glina: ‘In the town of Glina, we arrested and imprisoned many Serbs, and transferred them in small groups from the prison to the church. Our leader armed us with hatchets and knives and we went to work. Some were killed by a blow to the heart. Others had their throats cut, and still others were cut into pieces with the hatchet. Not only was the church transformed into a slaughterhouse, but it was a hell of screams and groans. …’

“Here is the second testimony. It is that of a survivor, Jednak Ljuban, who told us the story of the fatal hours through which he lived in the tragic church of Glina: ‘The Ustashis gathered a few hundred peasants from my village and from the outskirts and took us to Topusko. The Ustashis explained to us that we were to attend Church to hear a Te Deum sung for the longevity of the Poglavnik and of the”Independent State of Croatia”. … But inside the church, everything seemed ready for Mass. We heard a truck stop in front of the church and very soon a large group of Ustashis entered, armed with hatchets and knives. They closed the door behind them. One of the Ustashis then asked the Serbs whether they had on them their certificate of conversion to the Catholic religion. The only two that were able to provide such evidence were immediately released. . . . The Ustashis began massacring our group in the church. Cries of agony and fear could be heard all around. I fainted . . . and then, suddenly, silence seemed to reign in the church and I caught sight of the flickering candles which still shone on the desecrated altar. . ..’

“At Kladusa, they carted whole Serbian families to the slaughterhouse. There they killed them like cattle and, without waiting for them to expire, hung them up on the butcher’s hooks—the little children first, then the women and, last of all, the men. … In the villages lying between Vlasenika and Kladanj, we discovered babies who had been impaled on the pointed slats of an enclosure, their small limbs contorted by pain, like pinned insects. The most ferocious of cannibal rites have never equalled this. . . .”

The revelations of a trial

Ante Pavelitch was too important to go into the dock as a war criminal. Like many others of his kind, he knew how to make a timely escape and this good Catholic had no difficulty in finding a holy refuge.

But his confederates were not all as lucky:

“At Banja-Luka, capital of western Bosnia”, we are told by FOrdre de Paris,16″the trial has just taken place of one of his principal collaborators. Dr. Viktor Gutitch, Governor of the province. Dr. Gutitch, like his accomplices, had to answer before the tribunal for his innumerable crimes. One of his collaborators was Dr. Felix Nedjelski, barrister, and the other, Dr. Nikolas Bilogrivitch, Catholic priest of Banja Luka. They helped Gutitch to exterminate the Serbian Orthodox population, to destroy the Orthodox churches and to loot the property of the people and churches.

“The mass murder which the people called the ‘massacre of Saint-Elijah’s Day’ will be remembered as one of the most abominable crimes of human history. On this Orthodox feast day, the Ustashi hordes exterminated hundreds of thousands of Serbian men, women and children. Blood was shed in abundance, and mutilated and lacerated corpses lay everywhere in meadow, forest, field, stream, school and church. On 7 February 1942, Gutiteh, Bilogrivitch and another priest, Miroslav Filipovitch, organized horrible massacres in several Serbian villages on the outskirts of Banja Luka.

“‘After the massacre of the village of Drakulitch’, said Dr. Gutitch, ‘I arrived at Banja Luka. The following day, the curate Miroslav Filipovitch came to me and asked me for some spirits. While he was drinking, he said,”Yesterday at Drakulitch, we exterminated every living soul—about 1,300 men, women and children.”Then he asked me what he should do if in Zagreb they reproached him with having taken part in the massacre.’

“But the curate Filipovitch had nothing to fear. No one in Zagreb made the slightest reproach to him for his crime, no more than they were to do for those he was still going to commit.

The population’s forced conversion

“Gutitch and Bilogrivitch forced the Orthodox population to change to Catholicism. Terrified by the bloodshed, the Serbs believed that this conversion would preserve them from persecution and suffering, and, giving way to this pressure, they embraced Catholicism. Bilogrivitch, who received them, though he knew the motives for their conversion, forced the converts to learn the teachings and prayers of their new religion to the smallest detail. The role of some of the Catholic clergy in the Ustashi State was odious. Certain priests were concerned only to acquire as many followers as possible, thinking that this would weaken Serbian orthodoxy and annihilate its religious institutions.

“The third accused, Nedjelski, was in addition the organizer of the ‘Crusaders’, a youth organization attached to the Ustashis. In his capacity as member of this organization. Dr. Nedjelski, a fervent admirer of Hitler, went to Germany to learn ‘from the source’ how to educate the young, with a view to improving the organization of that horrible place of torture—the Independent State of Croatia.

“Tomo Brkitch, a Croatian witness, told the Court about the massacre of the Serbs: ‘In 1941, at Kljutch, many Serbs were massacred by the Ustashis. In certain villages, Serbian families were locked in their houses, to which the Ustashis then set fire. I remember that on one occasion some men, women and children had come to Kljutch to be converted—”so that we might save our lives, my brother”, they said.’

“Nikola Dragovitch, from the village of Hatiteh, succeeded in escaping, thanks to the corpses which covered him: ‘I was with my cousin and many of our villagers. The Ustashis tied us, two by two and back to back, and started to fire on us. Some were killed on the spot, others were still alive. I was only injured and was soon buried under the falling bodies. Five hundred men lost their lives there. It was the dead who saved me. At dusk, I managed to escape to the neighbouring forest.’

“Pero Dodig, Serb, from Savski Most, asserted that the Ustashis killed 7,000 men there, within a few days. A widow, Ivanitch, saw every one of her seven boys killed the same day, Saint-Elijah’s Day.

“The Moslem priest of Prijedor, Dervish Bibitch, made his statement, and added: ‘One day, in 1941, Gutitch had come to Prijedor. As soon as he was out of his car he declared that he was not satisfied with the welcome given him, since not one hanged Serb was to be seen. During the meeting he declared:”The Serbs must go, some by rail, some by river—without a boat—and the bodies of the remainder strewn across the fields which, in accordance with the promises of our great allies, Mussolini and Hitler, will for ever belong to Croatia”.’

“Gutitch’s visit and speech were effectively followed by a terrifying massacre of Serbs at Prijedor and the surrounding area. The horrors that took place there are related by Hasan Palik, a Moslem and a coachman by trade: ‘In August 1941,1 was ordered to evacuate from the town the bodies of the murdered Serbs and to bury them. For two days I carried them and buried them. Among them were old women, old men and the tiniest babies. Bodies lay in every quarter of the town—in the courtyards, on the doorsteps. Sometimes, they were completely naked. Now and then among the mass of martyrs thrown into the common grave, there were some who were still alive, and who, regaining consciousness, took advantage of the night to escape from this bloody grave.’

The Camp of Jasenovac

“In the camp of Jasenovac, that hell on earth, more than 200,000 people—men, women and children—were killed. It was the most sinister of all the camps. One of its survivors, Dusan Malinovitch, Serb, tells of its horrors: ‘Brother Filipovitch, Chief of the Camp, and organizer of terrifying massacres in several villages around Banja Luka, used to pay daily visits to the gaols, where he would cut the throats of women and children. With his assistants, he would also kill his victims with the hatchet. The poor wretches would die in the most atrocious agony.’

Red streams

“At nocturnal orgies, Gutitch, surrounded by his partisans, took part in the assassination of the Serbian bishop Platon, of Banja Luka, of several deputies and of many of the town’s inhabitants, who were tortured with monstrous bestiality, and thrown into a river. Gutiteh spread the blood-thirsty game with his orders and incitements to murder. In the days of pagan Rome, Christianity was a crime, and all those guilty of this crime were thrown to the wild animals. In Ante Pavelitch’s Croatian State, there was the crime of ‘Serbian Orthodoxy’, and all Serbs were doomed to either the stake or slaughter. This was how Pavelitch sought to settle the problems of race and religion, and to prepare the annexation of the Serbian countries to Croatia.

“Down the streams and rivers, which were red with human blood, drifted the mutilated bodies of the murdered, who, their arms bound and often bearing coarsely worded tags, could not, even now, find the peace of death. Among the ruins of their desecrated temples, hundreds of Orthodox priests suffered the martyrdom of early Christian ages.

“No words could describe the sufferings endured by the Serbian people in the Ustashi State. No healthy-minded person could imagine the many crimes committed by Ante Pavelitch, Andrija Artukovitch, Dr. Saritch, Gutitch, Eugen Kvaternik-Dido, Kulenovitch and so many others.

“At the decisive moment of the Yugoslav people’s struggle for liberty, these Ustashi traitors sold themselves to the enemy.”

Mass throat-cutting at Jasenovac

Herve Lauriere tells us that:

“One of the specialities of the camp was mass throat-cuttmg. It was carried out with a special ‘Graviso’ knife. Imagitfe a kind of dagger, curved at the end and fixed to a special handle which the slaughterer ties to his fore-arm. Armed with this terrible weapon, the murderer would have someone hold back the victim’s head and then would slash, as with a razor, the well-stretched throat. From time to time those in charge of the camps would organize competitions for the ‘best throat-cutter.’. . . Those who were not killed in this way, had every chance of being burned alive in the brickkilns, around which the camp of Jasenovac had been built. . . . The ovens could take between 450 and 600 people. During the first months of 1942, children—mostly Jews—were burned there en masse.. . .”

The Sons of Gentle Saint Francis

“During a sermon, in July 1941”, writes Mr. Herve Lauriere, Ante Klaritch, Franciscan Brother of Tramosnica, uttered these unbelievable words, ‘You have not yet killed a single Serb. You are nothing but old women who should be wearing skirts! If you are not all armed, take an axe or a sickle, and, wherever you meet a Serb, cut his throat.’

“As for Brother Augustine Cievola, from the Monastery of St. Francis, at Split, ‘to the great amazement of his fellow-citizens, he was going about the streets, a revolver strapped to his habit, inviting the people to massacre the Orthodox Christians. . . .’

“Father Bozidar Bralo, who was soon appointed Ustashi prefect of Bosnia-Herzegovina, never travelled by car without carrying a machine-gun. ‘Death to the Serbs!’ was his message to the villages. He was accused of having personally participated in the massacre of 180 Serbs at Alipasin-Most, and of having danced, in his cassock, together with other Ustashis, a ‘dance of Death’ around the bodies of his victims. This Bozidar Bralo was a patron of the famous division ‘Crna Legija’ (the ‘Black Legion’) whose crimes in Bosnia- Herzegovina were numberless. . . . Seven thousand people were exterminated within the space of three days in the Savski-Most district.

“One of the celebrities of the Catholic Ustashi world was Dragutin Kamber, Parish-priest of Doboj, in central Bosnia. His titles as well as his zeal for the regime very soon raised him to the rank of prefect of the District of Doboj. To his credit were the arrest, deportation or execution of Orthodox priests and of Serbs in general, as well as the closing-down of the church of St. Peter and St. Paul. … He wrote many articles in the Ustashi and religious press, in which he never ceased to defend both his cherished regime and Hitler’s new order in Europe. … At the first signs of resistance against the regime of terror which he represented in his district, he fled to Sarajevo, where he was soon to occupy a very important position at Ustashi headquarters and to be nominated Chief of Propaganda with the grade of Colonel. . . .”

Sadism

“The Franciscan Brother, Miroslav Filipovitch”, writes Mr. Herve Lauriere, “went as far as to accept the role of executioner in the concentration camp of Jasenovac. . . .

“The end justifies the means. . . . Certain executioners repeatedly proved themselves capable of a sadism and a cruelty as vile, if not viler, than all that dishonoured the human race in the Nazi camps of extermination . . . their leaders having learned the technique of murder in Pavelitch’s special schools. . . . What, too, can one say of those Catholic priests who were so unbelievably devoted—I can think of no other word to qualify their attitude—whether in their morbidity or their fanatism. . . . Mgr. Dionis Juricev, the personal confessor of that monster Ante Pavelitch, dared to declare, in the locality of Starza, that all Serbs refusing to be converted to Catholicism were to be killed. …”

The Roman Church did indeed tolerate all these crimes. She fondly sheltered murderous priests and monks in her bosom. She never once disowned Mgr. Stepinac, their responsible chief—on the contrary!

Twenty kilogrammes of human eyes

“It was at this time,” writes Herve Lauriere, “that Italian soldiers at Dubrovnik were able to photograph an Ustashi who was proudly carrying around his neck two garlands and’a necklace made out of human tongues and eyes.

“In his book ‘Kaput’ the Transalpine writer, Curzio Malaparte, has told of his visit, as war correspondent of the Corriere della Sera to the Poglavnik Ante Pavelitch. A close friend of Count Ciano— Casertano, Minister Plenipotentiary of Italy at Zagreb—accompanied him.

“‘The Croatian people’, said Pavelitch to Malaparte, ‘want to be governed by kindness.’ ‘As he spoke’, continues Malaparte, ‘I noticed there was a wicker basket on the desk, to the right of the Poglavnik. The lid was raised, and one could see that the basket was filled with what appeared to be oysters. Ante PaveUtch lifted the basket-lid, and showing me the molluscs, a mass of gluey and gelatinous oysters, he told me, smiling his lethargic smile:

—”This is a gift from my faithful Ustashis: twenty kilogrammes of human eyes”.””

In case anyone should doubt this story, let us recall the words of a British journalist, J. A. Voigt, who wrote in 1943:

“Croatia’s policy consisted in massacre, deportation or conversion. Hundreds of thousands were massacred. The massacres were accompanied by the most bestial tortures. The Ustashis gouged out their victims’ eyes, which they wore as garlands or carried in bags, to be given away as mementos.”

The martyred Orthodox bishops

“I am ashamed to recall”, writes Herve Lauriere, “the tortures to which the Ustashis subjected two Orthodox bishops: the Bishop of Zagreb, Mgr. Dositej, whom they beat and tortured until he went mad, and that venerable octogenarian who was the Bishop of Sarajevo, Mgr. Petar Zimonitch, whose throat was slit like a pig’s…

“Who would deny the hideousness of the role adopted by Mgr. Switch, Catholic Archbishop of Sarajevo in this business? While his brother-in-Christ and fellow-citizen, Bishop Zimonitch was dying so ignominiously, that eminent ecclesiastical dignitary, who had been a member of the Ustashi movement since 1934, had the effrontery to write in his review ‘Katolicki Tjednik’, the Catholic weekly, impious words in order to exalt ‘the use of revolutionary methods in the service of truth, justice and honour’, and to declare further that it is ‘foolish and unworthy of the disciples of Christ to think that the battle against evil (sic) could ever be conducted in a noble manner, with gloves on. . . .’

“This Catholic prelate dedicated an ‘Ode to the Poglavnik Pavelitch’:

“‘Doctor Ante Pavelitch, O beloved name!
In him does Croatia find its Heavenly joy.
May the Heavenly Saviour accompany thee ever,
Thou, our adored guide!’
(The Croatian People, 25 December 1941)

Shod like a horse

“The torture to which Mgr. Platon, an eighty-one-year-old Orthodox bishop was subjected, is unprecedented in the history of barbarity, as his torturers shod him like a horse and then, despite his atrocious suffering, made him walk to within a few kilometres of the town. And when his mutilated feet could no longer carry him and he fell, they tore at his beard (as they did to all the other priests) and, on the martyr’s bared breast, the Ustashis lit a charcoal fire. After which there remained but to deal the dying man the last hatchet blows and to throw his body into the River Vrbanja. . . .”

As we leave this veritable”Chamber of Horrors”which was the “regeneration”of Croatia by the Ustashi murderers, we now come to an account an eminent Yugoslav in exile has given of the services unceasingly rendered by Mgr. Stepinac to the zealots of the True Faith, throughout their apostolate.

Mgr. Stepinac and the Ustashis

“. .. On 10 April 1941, the day on which the Croatian Ustashi State was created, Mgr. Stepinac visited General Kvatemik and congratulated him upon this event—in reaUty, the work of Hitler and Mussolini. On 18 April, the day when the Pavelitch Government was formed, Mgr. Stepinac called upon Paveliteh, to welcome him and to congratulate him on behalf of the Church. … A week later, Mgr. Stepinac issued a pastoral letter in which he jnvited the clergy of his diocese to have a Te Deum sung in all the churches, in honour of Ustashi Croatia; he also added: ‘Knowing as we do the men who today hold the destinies of the Croatian people in their hands, we are firmly convinced that our effort will be furthered and completely understood.’ (Le Journal Catholique, No. 17—1941.)

“Mgr. Stepinac became Member of the Ustashi Parliament; he wore Ustashi decorations; he attended all the big official meetings of the Ustashis, during which he even made speeches; he posed beside the Croatian Episcopate, whom he took to see Pavelitch on 28 of the following June: an encounter which was to seal the intimate collaboration between Croatia’s spiritual powers and Pavelitch . . . and soon . . . and so on.

“Is it then surprising that the Croatian satellite State should have regarded Mgr. Stepinac with deference? That the Ustashi press should have sounded his praises? It is, alas, all too evident that without the support of Mgr. Stepinac, both on the religious and on the political plane, Ante Pavelitch would never have enjoyed such close collaboration from the Catholics in Croatia. Ante PaveUtch had every reason to thank God for Mgr. Stepinac’s attitude—and not to complain of it!

“When the Ustashi State felt its end drawing near, Pavelitch very seriously considered handing over the reins to Mgr. Stepinac; he was informed of this plan, but it was upset by the partisans advancing towards Zagreb. Nevertheless, Mgr. Stepinac still offered his palace as a refuge to political terrorists and murderers who were being sought by the police. It was with his consent that the archives of the Ustashi Government were hidden there. After the war, a part of the gold stolen from the victims of the Ustashis was discovered in the vaults of the churches and even under a monastery altar. . . .

“It is true that at the end of 1943, when everyone saw that the Nazis and the Fascists were losing, Mgr. Stepinac took certain steps to provide for the future—but this was already well jeopardized, for the Ustashi list of victims bore the names of some 600,000 martyrs—Orthodox and Jewish Serbs—who had been massacred! These are quite apart from the 240,000 Orthodox Christians who were forced to adopt Catholicism! No prelate was more ardent than Mgr. Stepinac in spreading propaganda against the Allies. It should be recalled that many a time the B.B.C. called upon him to ‘retract’ his speeches, but he preferred to hold his tongue ! …

“In order to back this all-too-brief account with ‘documents’, here are two factual testimonies on Mgr. Stepinac’s activities during this sinister period of the world conflict. Both emanate from Croatian Catholic personalities, the first of whom was in Croatia during the war and the second exiled in London. On 20 January 1942 Mr. Prvislav Grisogono, former Minister, wrote to Mgr. Stepinac: ‘the inhuman and anti-Christian attitude of all too many Catholic Croatian priests, has not only aroused the consternation of many of their brother-priests, but it has also deeply afflicted the majority of Croatian intellectuals, including myself. I have also been deeply shocked by the absence of any public manifestation of Christian or human sympathy on the part of the Catholic hierarchy in favour of our Serbian compatriots of the Orthodox faith who have been the victims of a regime of indescribable massacre and lawlessness. It was with sorrow that I wondered how and why the authorized Catholic circles of Croatia did not feel bound to disown, in the name of the Catholic Church, the forced conversions of the Orthodox Christians and the confiscation of their goods.’

“Mr. Veceslav Vilder was a member of the exiled Government of Yugoslavia, and during a B.B.C. broadcast on 16 February 1942, he condemned the attitude of Mgr. Stepinac in the following terms: ‘And now the worst atrocities are being committed around Stepinac. Our brothers’ blood flows in rivers, causing an ever greater gulf. The Orthodox Christians are converted by force to Catholicism and, far from hearing the Archbishop preach revolt, we read that he is taking part in the Fascist and Nazi parades.’

“We could produce many more documents, for they are abundant. . . . And this is how Mgr. Stepinac covered with the cloak of his sacerdotal authority and his silence, a whole series of odious totalitarian activities of complete servility towards the temporal power — activities which have been written in words of blood in Yugoslav history.”

The moderation of the document just quoted was to be recognized when the time came to publish the court proceedings of Zagreb, where, after the Liberation, Mgr. Stepinac was finally required to give an account of himself. Here are a few extracts from these proceedings.

Mgr. Stepinac’s trial

On 18 September 1946, the Yugoslav Government ordered the arrest of Mgr. Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb and Primate of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia. This measure was taken after the Croatian Supreme Tribunal had heard the statements of those who were accused of war crimes and who belonged to the “White Crusaders” group of Stepinac’s secretary, Father Ivan Salitch. These statements ran as follows:

“The Archbishopric is the centre of terrorist activity”, declared Father Superior Modesto Martinchitch, Provincial of the Franciscans.

“Archbishop Stepinac’s palace at Zagreb is the centre of Ustashi, ‘White Crusader’ and terrorist activity”, affirmed Father Ivan Salitch.

To the Prosecutor’s question:”What does the Archbishop want?”, Father Ivan Salitch replied:”He wants an Independent State of Croatia, like that created by the Ustashis and the Italians.”

Speaking of Colonel Erik Lisak, who clandestinely returned to Yugoslavia after the Liberation, Father Ivan Salitch added:”Colonel Lisak has passed the night at the Archbishop’s palace and has had the banner of the ‘White Crusaders’ put up in the Archbishop’s chapel.”

The other accused confirmed that Mgr. Stepinac had played”an active role of instigator and accomplice”in their terrorist organization, which aimed to overthrow the Yugoslav regime.

War criminal

Charles Pichon tells how the trial went.

“The trial of Mgr. Stepinac opened in September at Zagreb. The Archbishop was expecting this trial. . . . In a pastoral letter dated July 1946, he declared: ‘. . . It matters little to me if one day I find myself on the list of”war criminals”. . . .’

“The trial took place at Zagreb College. The accused refused to reply. .. .On 11 October the Court found him guilty of having incited the Catholic clergy to collaboration with the Ustashi puppet regime, of having in his capacity as Chairman of the Conference of Bishops and President of the Catholic press, written numerous articles of ‘Fascist tendencies’, of having ‘served the Ustashi cause by provoking racial hatred’, of having incited the Croatian people to collaborate with the Ustashis, of having given ‘numerous and palpable proofs of his sympathy and collaboration with the Ustashis’, of having presided over the commission of three members which directed the initial forced conversions of Serbian citizens. . . . The President of the Tribunal stipulated that, under the influence of Mgr. Stepinac, other ecclesiastics had organized Ustashi units and ‘crusaders’ with a view to conducting terrorist activity against the existing regime. The Archbishop was, in consequence, condemned to sixteen years’ hard labour, with loss of all civic rights for a period of five years and the confiscation of all his property. . . .”

The “clear conscience” of the Archbishop of Zagreb

“To plead ignorance would have been absurd. No one is better informed of the happenings and the state of mind of the population than a high dignitary of the Church. Stepinac’s main argument during his rare declarations at the trial was to question the competence of the Tribunal. . . .

“No one, not even the Vatican, was able to deny that the Catholic Church in Croatia carried out a violent conversion of Orthodox Christians. Nor was anyone able to prove the innocence of the Church’s servants in face of the dreadful mass assassinations perpetrated in Croatia—the outcome of a cold political calculation and a savage religious mystique.

“Archbishop Stepinac backed the Croatian Ustashi State with all the weight of his authority. His entire activity during the occupation proves this. We have seen thousands of writings and photographs which are overwhelmingly incriminating for both the Archbishop and for many of the Croatian clergy.

“Moreover, who were the Pavelitches and the Ustashis? They were the creatures of Italian Fascism and were organized well before the war in Italy and Hungary. Could Archbishop Stepinac and his ‘clear conscience’ justify the unconditional support which he had given to the Ustashis?…

“Stepinac concealed in his own palace the archives belonging to Pavelitch’s Government. He equally hid the Ustashi treasures, fruits ofpillage: thirty cases of gold pieces, -which bore a sinister resemblance to the contents of the cases found in the Reichsbank cellars. “But what lost Stepinac, was mainly his illusion of being able to launch against the new State a sort of insurrection of crusaders, made up of the few remaining Ustashi troops. It may well be asked what government in the world could continue to close its eyes to such acts, even if an archbishop were concerned. . . .”

Beneath the sacred vaults

“If you have been plundering for four years”, writes Herve Lauriere,26″you never cover up everything. Thus, as Ivan Saliteh, Mgr. Stepinac’s private secretary, was to testify, on 15 November 1945, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Alajbegovitch, the day before the ‘government’ made oflF, took it into his head that Archbishop Stepinac’s residence would be the best hiding-place. Five heavy cases were brought to the archiepiscopal palace on the Kapitol and handed to Ivan Salitch and a certain Laskovitch. . . . Well, there was everything in the cases: Ante Pavelitch’s films, photographs and speeches, as well as — and these were the main contents — nuggets and coins of gold, jewelry, precious stones, gold and platinum scraps from dentures, wedding rings, watches, bracelets — in short, everything that had been robbed from all too many victims.”

[van Salifch, Private Secretary to Mgr. Stepinac

“That Stepinac should have asked his clergy to celebrate mass each year on 10 April, the date on which the Ustashi State was constituted. . . . That on 23 February 1942 the Archbishop should have greeted Ante Pavelitch and the ‘Ustashi sabor’ on his cathedral parvis, that he should even have made a speech of welcome, might be considered admissible: we have known many such petty acts of cowardice.

“Unfortunately for the Archbishop, he went further than that. He, for example, received 100 million kuna from the Ustashi Government, to organize propaganda in the latter’s favour. When the Ustashis had to flee, he hid, under the archiepiscopal palace at Zagreb, archives which were of a most compromising nature for Pavelitch and his people.

“Worse still: during the autumn of 1945, that is to say, after the Liberation of Yugoslavia. . . Mgr. Stepinac welcomed, took in and concealed in his palace Colonel Lisak, a renowned Ustashi, who had clandestinely returned to Yugoslavia armed with instructions from Pavelitch to organize a Hitlerist movement. At the same time, the Archbishop on various occasions contacted a spy in the pay of Italy, Lela Sofijanec, who was assuring the liaison between Trieste and the Ustashi underground movement in Croatia.

“And how could it be forgotten that two of the most dangerous terrorists and avowed traitors of the Yugoslav nation in this movement were none other than Ivan Salitch, private secretary to Mgr. Stepinac, and the priest Simecki, his most intimate friend? Even the least prejudiced will grant that this is an overwhelming record.”

There is still one question to be answered: What happened, after the Liberation of Yugoslavia, to those converting zealots who, for four years, had worked so well for the”unification”of their country under the papal banner? Herve Lauriere gives us the reply:

“No less than 4,000 Ustashis—Pavelitch, his ministers, generals, chiefs of police, commandants of the concentration camps, executioners and torturers—fled to Austria and Italy. They left behind them thousands of burning, plundered and deserted villages, and, in the cellars, caves, precipices, and in the graves dug in the fields, just how many hundreds of thousands of bodies no one will ever know. Archbishop Saritch, Bishop Garitch and 500 priests also fled with Pavelitch’s column to Austria. They then went to Switzerland, where they were able to live in Fribourg, thanks to a Croatian Catholic priest who had taken up his abode at the College St. Raphael of that town. . . . Bishop Garitch died there, whereas Archbishop Saritch emigrated to Madrid, where he took refuge in a monastery.”

Why this desperate flight of the princes of the CathoUc Church and of their clergy? Were their consciences so guilty that they should abandon their own country in this way? Had they really committed so many terrible crimes?

“For a long while”, writes Herve Lauriere, Ante Pavelitch went into hiding — with his gold — in the monastery of Saint Gilgen, near Salzburg, and the monastery of Bad-Ischl, near Linz, in Austria. He wore his cassock with dignity. Later, still disguised as a priest, he went to Italy, where, until 1948, he lived in Rome under the name of Pater Gomez and Pater Benarez, in a monastery which enjoyed the privilege of exterritoriality. Thanks to the Roman clergy, in November 1948 he was able to embark on an Italian boat for Buenos-Aires. He arrived in Argentina with a passport that had been issued by the International Red Cross m Rome on 5 July 1948 in the name of Pal (Pablo) Aranyos. Other Ustashis, less fortunate than he, ended up in concentration camps which the Allies had had to organize in central Europe. … It was not long before these camps were being visited by pious travellers from Rome. . . . This band went from camp to camp, taking particular interest in the war criminals, in the important people of the former ‘Independent State of Croatia’, and in their most bloodthirsty executioners. It enabled two abominable individuals to escape from the camp at Fermo. The first, Ljubo Milos—the ‘human hyena’—was responsible for the death of over 120,000 people at the camp of Jasenovac. As for the other, the hideous Luburiteh, he had been one of the hangmen of Sarajevo and in a single morning had had 56 people hanged on the town’s electric pilons …. Soon, the Ustashi mob was leaving the camps en masse, often clothed, like Pavelitch, in a cassock. Their rescuers led them to where they were being awaited.

“In Austria, these Ustashis found a sure refuge in the monastery of the Franciscan Fathers of Klagenfurt, in that of Santa-Catholica, and so on. … In Italy, they were offered hospitality at Rimini, Cento Cele, Comte Ferrata, San Paulo di Regola, Grotamare, San-Giovanni Baptista and at the Franciscan monastery of Modena. In Rome, Luburitch and Draganovitch were received into the Institute of Saint Jeremy . . . which in fact remained the rallying point, in Italy, the centre of all Ustashi activity. . . . The same was true in Paris of a Franciscan monastery where these gentlemen hold conferences enlivened by a Croatian priest. . . . The Ustashi Committees in Austria are helped by Mgr. Rorbach, Archbishop ofKlagenfurt.”

Pope Pius XII blesses the killers

Were we not right to say at the beginning of this chapter that the Vatican had never before compromised itself to such an extent as it did in Croatia? There, as nowhere else, the Roman Church put aside its mask of gentleness and revealed its true countenance—a countenance of blind ambition and pitiless fanaticism.

Do we have to draw attention once more to the fact that the members of that Church who sat during four years in the Ustashi Parliament could, in pursuance of article 139-4 of the Canon Law, have accepted this mandate only if duly authorized by the Pope to do so? Must it again be recalled that the Holy Father never once reprimanded his good servants? And who could believe that the innumerable priests and monks who were preaching massacre would have persevered in their hysterical zeal had they felt in any way disowned, even tacitly, by their hierarchical superiors and their supreme chief, Pius XII?

To be sure, he never thought of disowning them, and the heinous Pavelitch, the”adored guide”of Mgr. Saritch, Catholic Archbishop of Sarajevo, could rightfully take advantage of the flattering words, encouragement and blessings which the Holy Father showered upon him. No doubt much would be given today to be able to eradicate their trace. But they remain, well and truly printed in the Croatian papers of the time. The audience granted on 18 May 1941 to the Ustashi general staff was but a prelude to the Pope’s ever increasing manifestations of sympathy towards his pious assassins:

“The Ustashi youth of the ‘Crusaders’, 206 strong and in uniform, was received in audience by the Pope on 6 February 1942, in one of the Vatican’s most imposing rooms. The editor wrote that ‘the most touching moment was when the young Ustashis begged the Pope to bless Pavelifch, fhe Independent State of Croatia and the Croatian people. Each member received a medal as a souvenir’.'”

On 12 March 1942, for the anniversary of his enthronement, Pius XII sent this message to Pavelitch:

“To your Excellence’s humble felicitations, We reply, with Our thanks and Our wishes for Christian prosperity.”

At New Year 1943, the Pope sent a telegram to Pavelitch thanking him for his good wishes:

“For all that you have expressed to Us both in your own name and in that of the Croatian Catholics, We thank you and joyfully send the apostolic benediction to you and to the Croatian people.”

In March 1943, on the anniversary of Pope Pius XII’s enthronement, there was yet another exchange of congratulations and good wishes.

On 5 June 1943, Pavelitch cabled to the Pope his congratulations as well as”the expression of my personal devotion to Your Holiness and my wishes for the success of Your efforts for the general prosperity of humanity”. (Such humanitarian sentiments, coming as they do from the pea of this murderer, are particularly edifying.) The Pope replied very cordially,”praying God for the happiness of the Croatian people”. Doubtless the Serbian Orthodox Christians and Serbian Jews massacred by the Ustashis in hundreds of thousands were not included iu these good wishes.

In 1944, the following telegram was sent by the Pope to Pavelitch:

“The wishes which you and the Croatian people have expressed to Us, upon the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Our Pontificate, are very dear to Us, and We pray that God may bless you with His most gracious gifts.”

The Holy Father had many another opportunity to proclaim the high esteem in which he held the blood-thirsty poglavnik. In 1943, he granted an audience to D. Sinsitch, Member of the Ustashi Government; and E. Lobkowicz, representing the Croatian State at the Vatican, summarized the interview as follows in his report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Zagreb:

“At the close of our conversation the Pope declared that he was most happy to have had the opportunity to talk with Pavelitch and that it was a great joy to hear on all sides that he is a ‘practising Catholic’. I confirmed this and expressed my hope that Pavelitch would soon come to Italy, as well as my conviction that he would be very happy once again to receive the apostolic blessing. The Pope replied: ‘I shall be happy to give him that blessing’.”

It should be noted that in 1943, Pavelitch had already been “practicing” Catholicism for two years, by systematically carrying out the torture and extermination of the Orthodox clergy and their flock.

But this chief of killers was not alone in receiving the apostolic blessing. Pius XII, in his great goodness, extended it to the most unpretentious executants. The Osservatore Romano tells us that on 22 July 1941 the Pope received a hundred agents of the Croatian State Police, led by the Zagreb Chief of Police, Eugen KvaternikDido. This group of Croatian SS constituted the cream of the hangmen and torturers operating in the concentration camps, and he who presented them to the Holy Father committed such unspeakable horrors that his mother committed suicide in despair.

It may be imagined with what immense zeal these”good people”, once armed with the apostolic blessing, endeavoured to “practise” in the fullest sense of the term.

Indeed, as early as August 1941, the Minister of Religion, Mile Budak, who was regarded as Pavelitch’s “dauphin”, declared, during a public conference at Kariovac: “The Ustashi movement is based on religion. All our activity is based upon our devotion to religion and to the Roman Catholic Church.”

In reality, all this goes to prove not only that Pius XII was closely following the development of that activity, but also that he approved it. Indeed, one would have to be singularly naive not to understand the role played at Zagreb by Father Marcone. Legate of the Holy See, Sancti Sedis Legatus (as he described himself in his relationship with the Ustashi Government), he was thus, in terms of the Canon Law, the Pope’s alter ego.

In this capacity he took precedence in all official demonstrations. It was Pope Pius XII that was being honoured in his person—and what a person! The photograph here reproduced is more eloquent than any commentary could be. To see this fat monk, with his bestial snout and looking for all the world as if he had stepped out of a Goya print, occupying a place of honour next to the killer Pavelitoh, is like stepping back a few centuries, and the horrors of the Croatian autos-da-fe vividly recall the stakes of the Spanish Inquisition. The Holy-office is not dead, it merely slumbers. From 1939 to 1945 it awakened in Europe—and particularly in Croatia— as virulent as ever.

At the time, these atrocities were often exposed in the press of the free countries. But in face of these protests Plus XII kept silent. .. and with very good reason ! How could he have disowned his own bishops and priests who, duly authorized by himself, were sitting in the Ustashi Parliament, and whose principal, Mgr. Stepinac, Primate of Croatia, was presiding over the committee for the conversion of Orthodox Christians, with, as coadjutors, Mgr. Buritch, Bishop of Senj, and Mgr. Janke Simrak, Apostolic Director of the Bishopric of Krizevci? How could he have disowned Father Marcone, his legate and personal representative at Zagreb, who was supervising the operation?

Besides, this operation was in no way unexpected. Had the Ustashi Government, so well backed by the Pope, ever made a secret of its intentions regarding the Orthodox Serbs? On the contrary, it had made them clear immediately it came into power, as has been stated, and it was the Minister of Religion himself. Mile Budak, who, on 22 July 1941 at Gospic declared:”We will kill some of the Serbs, deport others, and the remainder shall be obliged to embrace the Roman Catholic religion.”

The programme was thus being carried out to the letter, exactly as conceived and defined. The scenario hardly ever varied: after a few massacres had been judiciously perpetrated in a particular region, there would arrive an evangelizing priest or monk, accompanied by a group of Ustashis, and this apostle, addressing the terrorized peasants, would always use the same sort of language as the monk, Ambrozije Novak, when he spoke to the villagers of Mostanica: “Serbs, you are all condemned to death, but you can save yourselves from death by becoming converted to Catholicism.”

This simple and practical procedure no doubt represented what the Episcopate understood by:”Creating favourable psychological conditions”. For even the Croatian and Ustashi Monsignori have a smattering of the Canon Law, which accepts as valid only those conversions which are sincere and are effected without constraint; accordingly, at their plenary conference of 17 November 1941, these worthy prelates had taken care to conform to the”doctrine”. The Orthodox Serbs were not being forced to conversion. Goodness, no! They were only being advised … a knife at their throat.

Heaven could not fail to bless this holy undertaking. This became evident as soon as entire villages, suddenly inspired by the True Faith, abjured—entirely of their own free will, of course—the error in which they had been living for so long. In this way 240,000 Orthodox Christians, all struck by a sudden illumination, were able to cry out, as in Polyeucte:

I see, I know, I believe, I am undeceived!

On the other hand, and in accordance with the programme, 300,000 were deported and more than 500,000 massacred.

However, admirably enough, the same collective grace was miraculously spreading over the members of the Greek faith. These schismatics were also pouring into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church”without the slightest pressure and through deepseated conviction with regard to the truths of the Catholic faith”, as prescribed by paragraph 8 of the Episcopate resolutions. Thus at Kamensko, in the very diocese of Mgr. Stepinac, 400 people— 400 strayed sheep—returned to the fold as one man, under the fond eye of the Prefect, the Chief of Police and the representatives of various Ustashi groups.

When announcing this massive conversion, Radio Vatican, on 12 June 1942, affirmed that it was”spontaneous and without the slightest pressure on the part of the civil or ecclesiastical authorities”.

Yet, after the war, the Holy See was soon to realize that the “spontaneity”, the”deep-seated conviction”of the 240,000 converts might well be doubted, even by those who remained fully convinced of the miracles of grace. The marvellous is, to be sure, a powerful resource, but everyone knows that it must not be over-exerted. Moreover, in liberated Croatia, overwhelming testimonies were pouring in from every quarter. Instructions were therefore modified as a consequence, and today there is not a single apologist of Pius XII who does not know the new”line”to be taken. It is now admitted that these mass conversions were not all”sincere and obtained without the slightest pressure”, but if the Roman Catholic Church did violence to conscience in this way it was out of pure charity, to deUver these poor souls from the wrath of the Ustashis, and to save them from the famous special knife which the Franciscan Filipoviteh and his emulators were wielding with such agility. (We are not told, however, whether or not these good monks, like those who were preaching murder, were also acting out of charity; but surely they must have been, since they in no way incurred the blame of their hierarchical superiors.)

Now, everything is clear—if not theologically, at least in a way most honourable to the Holy Father. He, who, in his humanitarian ardour, went as far as to forget his duty, to trample on the”doctrine” and to violate the most sacred canons, by accepting in the bosom of the Roman Church hundreds of thousands of wretches who had been falsely converted. Out of pure kindness, he took the sacrilege upon himself, thus jeopardizing his eternal salvation.

One is confounded by such abnegation; and if Plus XII is not damned for it—God forbid!—he will have fully deserved the halo of saint. Indeed, some say that this was one of his aspirations.

Such an example as this teaches us to be neither too hasty nor too reckless in our judgment. Maybe we have been too hard towards Mgr. Tiso. When that holy man despatched his Jewish compatriots to Auschwitz, how are we to know that he, also, was not moved by the spirit of charity?

No doubt the same was true at the other end of the world, in the Philippines, conquered by the Japanese. Andre Ribard reports that the American and English citizens arrested in the Pacific Islands, and in particular all the Protestant missionaries, were interned there in concentration camps which were in no way inferior to those of Germany. But”. . . the 7,500 Catholic missionaries remained free, they received help and were officially protected by the Japanese military authorities. The Jesuit review America reported this in January 1944. At that time, despite the progress made by the American Navy in regaining the Pacific Islands, there were still 528 Protestant missionaries in the internment camps: they had survived the treatment there. The Vatican had made … an amazing suggestion … to the puppet government of the Philippines; this is recorded under reference 1591, Tokyo, 6 April 1943, in a report by the Department for Religious Affairs for Occupied Territories, from which I have extracted the following passage: the Vatican expressed the Church’s wish to see the Japanese ‘pursue their policy and prevent certain religious propagators of error from acceding to a liberty to which they have no right’.

Here again, one clearly feels, it is necessary to read between the lines, and not to be misled by appearances. In short, we must be able to interpret what we read. Behind this cruel step there must surely have been some highly charitable intention towards the “strayed brethren”. But we must admit that we have been incapable of detecting it.

To revert to Croatia, the Roman Church was actively engaged in increasing its flock there, in perfect agreement with the Ustashi Government. It was thus that Mgr. Janko Simrak, one of Mgr. Stepinac’s coadjutors in the Committee for the Conversion of Orthodox Christians, was received on 14 July 1941 by Pius XII, named by him Bishop of Krizevci, and then decorated by Pavelitch with the”Grand Cross and Star”, which was accompanied by this citation:”For his devoted service among his clergy and flock and for his sincere collaboration with the State authorities in true Ustashi spirit”.

The”Catholicization”was proceeding splendidly, and Mgr. Anton Aksamovitch, Bishop of Djakovo, was able to write in a tract addressed to the Orthodox Christians:”There will be but one Church and but one Head of the Church, who is the Vicar of Christ upon earth. . . .”And he added:”Follow this friendly advice. The Bishop of Djakovo has so far received into the Holy Catholic Church thousands of citizens who have received the certificate of honesty from the State authorities. Follow the example of these brethren and send us, without further delay, your application for conversion to Catholicism. As Catholics you will remain peacefully in your homes and you will be unhindered in your daily occupations”.

As may be seen, this good propagandist did not burden himself with idle circumlocutions.

Yet—many were called but they were by no means all chosen. On 30 June 1941, the Government had issued to the Catholic Bishops an instruction (No. 48468/41) defining the conditions under which the town halls or the police, upon receipt of a favourable recommendation from the Ustashi organizations, were to deliver the certificates of honesty required by the Orthodox Christians desirous of conversion. This instruction contained, inter alia, the following:

§3.—In issuing these certificates, care must be taken not to hand them to the rich Orthodox priests, tradesmen, workmen or peasants, or to Orthodox intellectuals in general, unless their personal honesty(!) can be proved, the Government having adopted the principle that certificates be refused to this category of person.

§4.—The peasants shall obtain this declaration without difficulty, save in exceptional cases.

The Bishopric of Zagreb (that of Mgr. Stepinac) in its letter No. 9259/41 dated 16 July 1941 recognized the merits of this discnmination: “Regarding the conversion of priests, teachers, tradesmen and intellectuals generally, as well as that of well-to-do Orthodox Serbs, it is essential that extreme caution be exercised over their acceptance. …”

We are not especially qualified in Canon Law, but we have never heard that it authorizes the acceptance or rejection of conversion according to the candidate’s social class.

What can this mean other than that the integrity of the”doctrine” was once more being sacrificed to eminently opportunistic considerations? It is easy to understand that the Ustashi Government was not concerned to see either the intellectual Serbs escape its claws under the cover of conversion to Catholicism, or, in particular, to see the rich tradesmen and peasants thus save their goods from plunder.

However good “practising” Catholics Pavelitch and his hired assassins might have been, they did not for all that forget the money interest.

The Croatian Episcopate, Mgr. Stepinac in the lead, made ample allowance for this . . . financial . . . point of view, and Father Marcone, the Pope’s Legate, had nothing against it. Heavenly “grace”was thus not permitted to work miracles among those Serbs who were too well provided with temporal goods, and, for the first time perhaps, the Church observed to the letter the words of the Divine Master:”It is more difficult for a rich man to enter into Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle”.

Yet the time came for the debacle of the Axis and of this Independent(!) State of Croatia which, thanks to the combined efforts of the Ustashis and the Roman Church, had for a while almost achieved its own kind of”Civitas Dei”. Thenceforth the Vatican propaganda went all out to try to prove the innocence of Mgr. Stepinac—and, incidentally, of Pius XII—in the eyes of world opinion. But what are subterfuge and gratuitous affirmations compared with so many officially established deeds and words? As it happened, the Archbishop of Zagreb remained to the very end the surest pillar of the puppet state and of its regime.

On 7 July 1944, according to Fiorello Cavalli, he declared:

“The Croatian people is shedding its blood for its State and it will preserve and keep its State. No one must be deterred by the many acts against the Croatian people and its autonomy but, on the contrary, all should join with renewed vigour in defending and strengthening the State.”

And it was at this very time, when the satellite state was nearing its end, that the Ustashi Government decorated Mgr. Stepinac with the”Grand Cross and Star”which he so proudly wore (Decree Oc. B. HI, No. 552, 1944).

The Croatian Episcopate, also, maintained its attitude in its pastoral letter of 24 March 1945.

It is a known fact that Mgr. Stepinac was thinking of accepting power from the hands of Pavelitch, when the advance of the Resistants towards Zagreb completely destroyed this plan. At all events, before fleeing with the routed German troops, Pavelitch entrusted his valiant supporter with the care of the defunct state’s archives—fihns, records of his speeches, and, in particular, cases of gold nuggets, jewels, watches, etc. . . . which were, as has already been seen, later found in the Archbishop’s palace. The Church had refused her protection to the legitimate owners of this property, but she did not haggle over offering it to the property itself. . . .

The wondrous deeds of the Archbishop of Zagreb could not fail to bring their reward: the Cardinal’s hat.

On 18 December 1952, in his speech to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Yugoslav Federal Assembly, Mr. Edward Kardelj, Minister of Foreign Affairs, accused Stepinac of being a war criminal with a vast number of victims on his conscience: 229 Orthodox churches destroyed, 129 Orthodox ecclesiastics killed and hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Christians massacred. He accused the Vatican of having sought, by naming him cardinal, to provoke religious intolerance in Yugoslavia and to undermine the unity of the Yugoslav people.

This elevation of Ante Pavelitch’s best collaborator is indeed sufficiently eloquent. But the Holy Father’s satisfecit did not end here. He took no steps to forget the man who had so well”Catholicized”Croatia, and on 5 November 1955 La Croix announced:

“Upon the occasion of his sacerdotal silver wedding, His Holiness Plus XII has sent the following message to His Eminence Cardinal Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb, who, as we recalled yesterday, is still detained in enforced residence in his native village of Krasic and unable to exercise his pastoral functions: ‘We formulate paternal wishes for you, dear son, you who are at the end of the twenty-fifth year of your ministry, and who have acquired such worthiness, and whose firm virtues We praise. In the trial you are enduring. We pray the Savionr to grant you His comfort, and We affectionately send you Our apostolic blessing’.”

Such was the Croatian crusade and, with all due deference to the fine Sacristy minds that are so keen to contradict the evidence, the responsibility of the Holy See is clearly written there, in indeljble characters, from beginning to end.

It would indeed require exceptional impudence to represent the Vatican as”opposed”to the Ustashi regime, when all the testimonies and documents confirm its perfect understanding with these “Assassins in the name of God”, as Herve Lauriere so aptly called them. There were two, and only two, men among the Croatian Catholic clergy who rose up against the horrors committed by these torturers: they were the Bishop of Mostar, Mgr. Alois Misitoh, and a priest from Zagreb, Josip Loncar. Of course, there was no sign of approbation from the Vatican to reward their inopportune charity, and it may well be doubted that Mgr. Misitch will ever be made cardinal. On the other hand, not one of the men of religion who preached murder, or who committed it with their own hands, was blamed, punished or banished from the Church.

We could look in vain for the slightest mark of reprobation, or even of reservation, on the part of Pius XII throughout the gory tragedy, from the time of Ante Pavelitch’s reception at the Vatican on 18 May 1941 to the praises showered even in recent years upon Mgr. Stepinac, whose”apostolate shines with the purest brightness”, according to the Holy Father. The main point, obviously, is to agree upon the meaning of this word”purity”, although the happenings in Croatia at that time are sufficient to dispel any ambiguity.

Has the world ever seen a clearer record than that of those four cruel years of evangelization by iron and by fire, four years during which Father Marcone, Legate to the Pope, never ceased to occupy a place of honour among those responsible, and thereby covered the most monstrous deeds with the authority of his holy mandate? And, even today, is there anything less ambiguous than the assistance and comforts lavished upon the Ustashi chiefs that are being hidden in monasteries, and within the very walls of the Vatican?

Is not the silence systematically observed by Pius XII towards the victims of the gigantic killing also significant? Not a word of pity was there, no more than of blame for their murderers, whether ecclesiastics or laymen.

They are surely very moderate, who wish to see in this attitude of the Pope nothing but a guilty inertia or a passive complacency. In fact, all this reeks of premeditated crime. No one can be made to believe that that terror, in which the Croatian Catholic clergy collaborated so passionately, could have come about without the express wish of the Holy See. Is fecit cui prodest, says the old judiciary adage: the crime has been committed by him that benefits thereby. Who was benefiting by the mass extermination of the Orthodox Christians, by their deportation or their forced conversion, if not the Roman Catholic Church, which was thus pursuing its secular dream: the extension of its influence towards the East? The end warrants the means: it was necessary to kill in order to reign. Nothing was denied to this cause.

Today

The Ustashis who have taken refuge in France are the subject of special solicitude on the part of the Roman Church and of certain politicians. In Paris, the Union of Croatian Workers is aifiliated to the”Confederation Generale des Travailleurs Chretiens”. They have in addition formed the two associations,”Alois Stepinac and “Stjepan Radio”. A paragraph which appeared in France Catholique of 19 December 1958 leaves no doubt concerning the support given to these separatists by the highest of religious authorities:”To exalt the greatness and heroism of His Eminence Cardinal Stepinac, a big meeting will take place on 21 December 1958, at 4 p.m., in the Crypt of S. Odile, 2, Avenue Stephane Mallarme, Paris (17). His Eminence Cardinal Feltin, Archbishop of Paris, will preside. senator Pezet and the Reverend Father Dragun, National Rector of the Croatian Mission in France, will take the floor. His Excellency Mgr. Rupp will celebrate mass.”

By such clerico-political manifestations, the narrow link between the Roman CathoUc Church and Croatian Fascism is once more confirmed: per sever are diabolicum.

The confession

This meeting had for its particular object the distribution among the Croatian colony in Paris of a recent work by Father Dragun, prefaced by Mgr. Rupp, Cardinal Feltin’s coadjutor.

Judging by the title, Le Dossier du cardinal Stepinac (Cardinal Stepinac’s File) it might at first be thought that the author had attempted to be objective—but this would be a great mistake. The presence in Zagreb of the very important person that was the Pontifical Legate Marcone is passed over in silence, as with all the apologists, in fact—which is quite understandable when one knows that Pavelitch received this personal representative of Pius XII as one of the family (see photograph).

Moreover, in this large tome, one is sure of finding, abundantly commented, the pleadings of Mgr. Stepinac’s two lawyers, but there is no sign of either the bill of indictment or the charge. Father DraguD makes one solitary allusion to these primordial documents, with the obvious intention of whitewashing Mgr. Stepinac—but, as it happens, it is only the more compromising for the Holy See: “The Prosecutor himself, in his charge quotes the Secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal MagUone, who already in 1942 had advised Archbishop Stepinac ‘to establish more cordial and more sincere relations with the Ustashi authorities’.”(pp. 32 and 137).

So, when he was at table at the home of Pavelitch, Head of the kiUer-apostles, the Sancti Sedis legatus was but obeying papal orders.

It is true, His Holiness’s”sincere and cordial”feelings for Hitler and Pavelitch and their consorts were already weU known to us. But it is of no little importance to have them officially confirmed by the Vatican itself, is it not?

Shortly after the Liberation, the students of University College, Cardiff, took as the theme of a lecture:”Should not the Pope be tried as a war criminal?”

This is a question that will again be asked during the rest of this work.