KGB INTENT ON LINKING PIUS XII WITH NAZIS

Washington DC, Jan 26, 2007 / 04:18 pm (CNA).- A former high-ranking officer with the KGB claims that the Kremlin and the Russian intelligence agency in the 1960s were set on executing a smear campaign against the Catholic Church, and the main target was Pope Pius XII.

In a recent issue of the National Review Online, Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, who eventually defected from the former Soviet bloc, recounts how the KGB and the Kremlin designed the deliberate campaign to portray the Pius XII “as a coldhearted Nazi sympathizer.”

“In February 1960, Nikita Khrushchev approved a super-secret plan for destroying the Vatican’s moral authority in Western Europe,” writes Pacepa. “Eugenio Pacelli, by then Pope Pius XII, was selected as the KGB’s main target, its incarnation of evil, because he had departed this world in 1958. ‘Dead men cannot defend themselves’ was the KGB’s latest slogan.”

The KGB used the fact that Archbishop Pacelli had served as the papal nuncio in Munich and Berlin when the Nazis were beginning their bid for power against him. “The KGB wanted to depict him as an anti-Semite who had encouraged Hitler’s Holocaust,” says Pacepa.

To do this, the KGB wanted some original Vatican documents to “slightly modify”. So they called in Pacepa, who was working for the Romanian intelligence service.

Pacepa says he became the Romanian point man. He was authorized to falsely inform the Vatican that Romania was ready to restore its broken relations with the Holy See, in exchange for access to its archives — in order to find historical roots that would help the Romanian government publicly justify its change of heart toward the Holy See — and a one-billion-dollar, interest-free loan for 25 years.

Between 1960 and 1962, the Romanian spy sent hundreds of archival documents connected in any way with Pope Pius XII to the KGB. Pacepa says none of the documents were incriminating in themselves, but they were sent to the KGB in any case.

The KGB used these documents to produce a powerful play attacking Pope Pius XII, entitled The Deputy. It eventually saw the stage in Germany in 1963, under the title The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy. It proposed that Pius XII had supported Hitler and encouraged him to go ahead with the Jewish Holocaust. The German director claimed to have 40 pages of documentation attached to the script that would support the thesis of the play.

The play ran in New York in 1964 and was translated into 20 languages. The play then led to a flurry of books and articles, some accusing and some defending the pontiff.

“Today, many people who have never heard of The Deputy are sincerely convinced that Pius XII was a cold and evil man who hated the Jews and helped Hitler do away with them,” Pacepa writes in the National Review Online. “As KGB chairman Yury Andropov, the unparalleled master of Soviet deception, used to tell me, people are more ready to believe smut than holiness.”

Pacepa says the truth has finally begun to emerge with the canonization process of Pius XII, which was opened by Pope John Paul II.

“Witnesses from all over the world have compellingly proved that Pius XII was an enemy, not a friend, of Hitler,” says Pacepa.

He also refers to the book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews From the Nazis, by David G. Dalin, which has compiled further proof of Archbishop Pacelli’s friendship for the Jews.

“At the start of World War II, Pope Pius XII’s first encyclical was so anti-Hitler that the Royal Air Force and the French air force dropped 88,000 copies of it over Germany,” he concludes.

CARDINAL STEPINAC, ADVOCATE OF CHURCH AND FATHERLAND

(Speech of the Archbishop of Zagreb Dr. Aloysius Stepinac from the defendant's bench in Zagreb on October 3rd and 8th, 1946)

To all the charges laid against me here I reply that my conscience is quite clear, although the public may laugh at that. Let me say also that I have no intention of appealing the sentence on my own behalf. I am convinced that I can suffer not only mockery, contempt and denigration, but because my conscience is clear, that I am ready at any moment to die.

The expression "the accused Stepinac" has been bandied about here a hundred times. No one is so naïve as to ignore that behind "the accused Stepinac" sits here on the defendant's bench the Archbishop of Zagreb, metropolitan of Croatia and highest primate of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia. You yourselves have so often appealed to the clergy here accused to say that Stepinac alone is guilty for the state of the nation and the clergy in general. For it is the clergy who you accuse through me. Citizen Stepinac could not have such an influence, but only Archbishop Stepinac.

These past seventeen months the fight against me has been waged in the press and public. For the past twelve months I have suffered as an internee in the confines of the archbishopric.

I am charged with having performed the baptism of Serbs. This is a misrepresentation of the facts for there is no need to baptize once more one who has been baptized already. The question here is rather one of conversion. I will not speak at length about that but will say that my conscience is clear and that history will bear me out. The fact is that I had to relocated the priest because the Serbian Orthodox population for hesitating to convert them to Catholicism menaced them with death. The fact is that during the war the Church had to compromise in order to render a favour to the Serbian nation with the intention of protecting it as best it could.

Mr. President has shown me a copy of a letter as proof that I was looking for the abandoned Orthodox (formerly Pauline) monastery in Orahovica to intern temporarily Trappists banished by the Germans from Reichenburg. I considered it my holy duty to help my Slovene brethren ousted by the Germans to obtain temporary shelter.

A more difficult case is my accusation as chaplain general. Mr. President asked me whether I did not consider it treason to the Yugoslavian state to retain that position under the government of the NDH. I was also chaplain general in the first Yugoslavia. For eight to ten years I tried to solve the question concerning my post as chaplain general, but it came to no definite solution. The question was finally solved in Yugoslavia with a concordat that involved many difficulties and although solemnly ratified in parliament carried no effect.

When the war between Yugoslavia and Germany was over I had to administer spiritual aid to the remnants of the Catholic soldiers of the former Yugoslavian army and of the newly created NDH. Although the state collapsed, the army still remained and we had to face the situation.
I was persona non grate both to the Germans and to the "ustase", being neither "ustase" nor under oath to them, as were your officials here now in court.

The Croatian nation has declared itself by plebiscite in favour of a Croatian state. I would be a scoundrel should I ignore the pulse of the Croatian nation which was deprived of its rights in old Yugoslavia. I said that Croats were forbidden to be promoted in the army or enter into diplomatic corps unless they changed their religion or married an Orthodox woman. This is the factual basis and the background of my epistles and sermons. The rights, independence and liberty of the Croatian nation as I have outlined them are all in accordance with the fundamental principles of the Allies laid down at the Yalta Conference and in the Atlantic Charter. If according to these conclusions all nations have the right of their independence, why should the Croatian nation alone be deprived? The Holy See has so often emphasized that small nations and national minorities have the right to be free.

Why should the Catholic bishop and metropolitan not say anything about that? If we must fail we will go down in the performance of our duty.

Do not think that the Croatian nation is satisfied with this trial. Still less can you pretend that the Croatian nation would not side with me. Should it have the opportunity to declare itself? I respect and will respect the will of my nation.

You accuse me of being an enemy of the state and of the people's authority. Today I acknowledge your authority. To which authority was I responsible before this? I must say it again that you are my authority only from May 8th, 1945 and before that no authority at all. Where can one in this world serve two master - you in the woods or they in Zagreb? Do I have to obey the government of the putschist Simovic (as you call him) abroad in London, or that one in Jerusalem; yours in the woods or this one in Zagreb? Is it possible to serve two masters? It corresponds neither to Catholic moral nor to international law and human rights. We could not ignore the authority here although it was "ustase". It was a fait accompli. You can call me to account only beginning with May 8th, 1945.

Regarding my terrorist activities you have no proof nor will anyone believe you. If Erik Lisak, Lela Sopianec and others came to me under assumed names, or if I received a letter, which I was unable to decipher, and if it is an offence that certain people came to me, I will accept the sentence with equanimity. If I have given a passport to Father Maric, I reproach myself in no way. My conscience is clear because I could still go to the other world with equanimity.

Whether you believe me or not makes no difference to me. The accused Archbishop of Zagreb is ready not only to suffer but also even to die for his convictions. Bakaric, the president of the Croatian republic himself said to Father Milanovic, "We are convinced that the archbishop is behind these actions but we can not prove anything whatsoever!" For me this tells all.

And now what is the real conflict and why has it not come to a peaceful solution? The state prosecutore has so often stated that nowhere is there so much freedom of conscience as here in this state. Allow me to enumerate some facts from which one can conclude the contrary. I say it before all of you: the People's Liberation Movement has massacred 260 to 270 priests. In no civilized state in the world would so many priests be punished in such a ways for offences imputed to them.

There is for example the case of the priest Bürger in Slatina, admittedly a member of the Kulturbund, on whom you passed the death sentence and whom you executed for having removed the sacred vessels. Yet this, as dean of the church in Vocin, was his sacred duty. You cannot content with the sentencing him to serve a term of eight years in jail. I say it again: in no other civilized state would the sentence have been met out in this manner. Father Povoljnak was executed without trial, like a dog in the street. The same methods were used against certain accused nuns. In no other civilized state would they be punished with death, but at the very most imprisonment. You have committed a fatal error in massacring priests. The people will not forget it. Here is your freedom such as it is.

Our Catholic schools built with so many sacrifices have been taken away from us. All activity in our seminaries has been thwarted. Had I not received from America seven wagonloads of provisions it would not be possible to start work this year. These are the children of our poor peasant people. You confiscated all our school property by force. You did nothing less than the Gestapo that confiscated all the property of the seminary in Mokricema. The Holy See issued many encyclicals concerning social reform. You ought to cooperate with the Holy See.

Our orphanages have been shut down. Our printing presses have been destroyed and I do not know where to find any. You have so persistently harried our press that it no longer exists. Is it not an outright scandal to say that the church is nowhere so free as here? The Dominicans have sent to press a holy booklet that I have spent 75,000 dinars to translate from French. When the booklet was printed only a few copies were turned out and they could not be obtained.

How much wrong does this constitute? Is this the freedom of the press? The Society of St. Jerome has been disbanded and no longer functions. It is a grave offence for a nation to treat thus our major and oldest cultural institution. You have reproached me with the Caritas. Yet I say here that the Caritas has benefited greatly our people and your children as well.

Then there is the question of the catechism. You have decided in accordance with your doctrine that in the higher classes of our secondary schools catechism is a forbidden subject and in the lower classes it is an option. How could you give small children who are still minors such a choice as to decide themselves for catechism? How can you forbid those in higher grades, who already have the right to vote, freedom of choice as regards to catechism in schools?

Our Catholic hospitals run by nuns have so much trouble. Against the will and great majority of the people you have introduced civil marriage. Why did you not have a referendum on this matter? In the United States where the republic is more tolerant, this is acceptable. There the choice between civil and ecclesiastical marriage is up to the individual. We do not oppose civil control of marriage to a certain degree. Yet our people are indignant that they must go first to the civil authority and only after that to the church to be married. If you have asked for our counsel, we would have made a suggestion on this matter.

Priests in the province of Backa have had some of their institutions nationalized. Some churches in Split were once, I do not know if they still are, used as storehouses. Church property has been confiscated without the permission of the Holy See. You saw that the people did not like to be allotted lands according to your agrarian reform.

But the question of finances is the least of our problems. The crux of the matter lies elsewhere. No priest or bishop today is sure of his life, day or night. Young people on the instigation of certain agents attacked Bishop Srebrenic in Susak. For three hours he was molested and otherwise maltreated in his room while your police and agents only looked on. And I myself had such an experience in Zapresic where I was stoned and menaced with revolvers.

Bishop Lach crossed the Drava to go to a confirmation, but was arrested and sent back across the Drava to be detained the whole night in jail in Koprivnica. Even your own men who were in the woods with you came to me and declared, "This is shameful treatment. We will protest to the authorities". Bishop Buric had the windows in his home shattered by stones while he was away at a confirmation. Bishop Pusic, as I hear, was these days assaulted with rotten apples and eggs.

We consider this freedom an illusion and will not be deprived of our rights like slaves. We will fight for our rights in this state by every legal means.

Here are three or four instances of your "freedom" to show only why we are fighting. In the schools texts you officially declared contrary to all proofs in history that Jesus Christ did not exist. You know that Jesus Christ is God! For him we are ready to die! Yet today your doctrine is that he did not exist at all. If any professor should dare to contradict this he would be dismissed from school.

I say, Mr. Public Prosecutor, that under these circumstances the church is not free, but will soon be eradicated.

Christ is the foundation of Christianity. You are interceding on behalf of Orthodox Serbs. I ask you, how do you imagine Orthodoxy without Christ? How do you imagine the Catholic Church without Christ? This is absurd.
In the school texts you state that Our Lady was a harlot. Do you not realize that for both Catholicism and Orthodoxy Our Lady is of the holiest conception?

You maintain, and this is your official doctrine, that man has come from the apes. Perhaps some people accept this. But what is your authority for this? No scientist of any international reputation recognizes this today.

According to your concepts materialism is the only scientific system. This means that God and Christianity have no validity. If there is nothing else but matter then you can bid good-bye to freedom as well. One of you men in a high position has said: "There is no man in this state whom we cannot bring to trial and sentence." You indict us illegally, casting us in the role of criminals and friends of terrorists. But I say that not all criminal deeds in the former NDH were the work of the Home Guard and the "ustase". It was not easy sailing for the church. It had to go through many difficulties.

Let no one think that I will make war on the regime. But the present authority must enter into discussion with the Holy See. The church cannot be dictated to, but is not against reaching agreements by honourable means. It is possible. Then bishops will know their duties and will not need to find fault with certain priests for certain delinquencies committed, as has been the case so far.

Finally let me say several words on the communist party, my real accuser. If one thinks that we took our present stand on account of materialistic considerations, he is wrong. We remain firm for all to see, even after we have been impoverished. We are not opposed to the notion that the workers obtain more rights in the factories, because it is in the spirit of papal encyclicals. Nor do we have anything against reform. But you who are supporters of Communism must allow us also the right to confess and propagate our doctrines, seeing that you are free to spread and promote materialism. Catholics have die and will die for those rights.

I conclude that one can come to an understanding through good will, but the initiative must come for the present day authority in the state. Neither the episcopate nor I can mediate in bringing about fundamental agreements, but only the state and the Holy See.

As far as I am concerned, in this trial I do not look for mercy. My conscience is clear.

(End of speech)

In his concluding speech of October 8th, 1946, the Archbishop of Zagreb, Dr. Aloysius Stepinac, declared the following in a voice of quiet composure: "Although I refused a lawyer, I accepted his defense. I must expand on the facts relative to the conversions and stress again that the competent bishops are responsible for the conversions in their own bishoprics according to church canons. According to that I cannot be responsible for what happened in other bishoprics, but only in the bishopric of Zagreb. Even in my bishopric, because of the extraordinary circumstances, some irregularities occurred against my will. These indeed were not conversions, but rather a travesty and for this the church cannot bear the responsibility. I repeat: the church never made any conversions by force.

I know very well that if I did not approve and enable conversions on the repeated insistence of the converts themselves, I would sit here today just the same on the defendant's bench. For I did not have the heart to allow the Serbs to be massacred.

Although the public mocks at all insinuations and charges coming from Mr. Public Prosecutor and the prosecuting attorney, I declare before God, the nation and the diplomatic corps and insofar as it is allowed in court, before the representatives of the foreign press and the public, that I am quite innocent and that history will exonerate me in view of my deeds."

TURRIS CHROATIC
In remembrance of Cardinal Stepinac

You relish to further the character assassination of this saintly man repeating at nauseoun the scandalous falsehoods thrown against Cardinal Stepinac during his Stalinist trial by Tito's regimen

CARDINAL ALOYSIUS STEPINAC IN LIGHT OF DOCUMENTATION

by Tihomil Rada

Within the scope of this Academy dedicated as always to the last remembrance of the archbishop of Zagreb Aloysius Stepinac, cardinal of the Catholic church and Croatian national hero, I will endeavour to describe briefly his historical significance and personality on the basis of the facts and attestations from that time. This profile will include the decisive moments of this life before the trial, his historical speech before the court of the communist party in Zagreb in 1946 and the repercussions of that trial in the world press, concluding with the salient facts of his life in prison up to his martyr's death on February 19th, 1960.

The biography of this great man whose memory we honour is simple and magnificent at the same time. Simple and moderate because Stepinac was born as the seventh child of a humble peasant in the village of Brezaric, parish of Krasic, on May 8th, 1898. At the age of 18 he was sent to the Italian front where he received two medals for bravery. Then he was taken as a prisoner of war by the Allies, from which he went on the Solun front where he again distinguished himself for bravery. It was enough to win him the Star of Karageorgevic, the highest Serbian decoration, which is even today acknowledged in this the second Yugoslavia.

In 1930 he obtained his doctor's degree in theology and philosophy. That same year at the age of 32 he was ordained to the priesthood on the feast of Christ the King.
The following year he returned to Croatia to be invested with ceremony in the cathedral of Zagreb. Two years later in 1934 Pope Pius XI appointed him assistant to the archbishop with the possibility of succeeding to that post himself, a move which caused genuine astonishment in the Catholic world because Stepinac at the age of 36 was the youngest member of the Catholic hierarchy to attain such a position. Only three years later in 1937, at the age of 39, Stepinac became the archbishop of Zagreb after the death of Dr. Antun Bauer.

From that epoch comes the valuable attestation of the Irish writer and priest Anthony H. Count O'Brien who for two full years was often a guest at the archbishop's table. (1) O'Brien wrote of the archbishop's social work, which consisted mainly of harbouring persecuted German Jews and even some communists; of the archbishop's Yugoslavsim prior to 1918; of his opposition to the Stojadinvoic government and his endorsement of the Agreement of 1939; and of Stepinac's considerable piety that O'Brien compared to that of Pope Pius XII.

This sketch of Stepinac by O'Brien indeed corresponded to Stepinac's nature, character and education. Educated in Rome and Zagreb, Stepinac adopted a modern and progressive viewpoint in regard to the relations between church and state, between clerical and national interests.

Prior to anyone among us, and perhaps in the world generally, Stepinac understood the extent of the persecution of the Jews and the communists in Germany. He took pains to protect both Jews and communists through his refugee committee with the consequence that the German ambassador in Belgrade reproached the Yugoslav government.

Soon in 1941 the Independent State of Croatia (3) became a reality. Stepinac, then as before later on, vindicated the right of the Croatian people to self-determination and to their own state. But this fact did not blunt his political judgement and already in May 1941 he refused to participate in the celebration occasioned by the signing of the so-called Rome agreements.

At that time, either to the church or directly to the authorities, (4) he raised his voice against the persecution of the Gypsies and massacre of the Serbs in Glina. In July 1941 Stepinac said the following words in a speech from the pulpit of the cathedral in Zagreb: "We are against and call God to witness against all forced conversions to the Catholic Church. We maintain that the Church has taken all possible steps to protect the Orthodox."

In the same spirit he opened his sermon on the feast of Christ the King in 1942, saying: "The world may destroy all material goods but cannot belittle the dignity of the human person."

I could enumerate many more attestations and documents about Stepinac during the war. All of it has been written in the foreign press, particularly in the Swiss newspapers, for instance in the "Neue Zuricher Zeitung", the "Basler Nachrichten" and others; and in the Allied newspapers, particularly the News Digest, an organ of the British Ministry of Information during the war. Among the other facts of that time one should note further his reception and protection of Slovene priests persecuted by the Germans; his aid to those interned in Italy; his contacts with the Allies in Italy with the intention of preventing air raids over Zagreb; and his care for the Orthodox children of the province of Kordun.

Not long after the end of the war the new regime incarcerated him for 17 days after which time he was released on the order of Tito who wished to meet him. On the occasion of his meeting with Tito, he said the following: "Allow me to tell you that I am for the freedom of the people and accordingly I will raise my voice against you every time you should encroach on this freedom".

At the outset of September 1945 all the newspaper carried a picture of him beside Vladimir Bakaric and others who were creating the government of the People's Republic of Croatia. Yet already on September 20th Stepinac signed the well-known pastoral letter at the Episcopal synod in which were brought to light precise facts concerning the mass killings of priest and monks; 243 killed, 169 jailed, 89 disappeared, altogether 501.

In addition to the above, 19 theological students were killed, seven monks and nuns. The pastoral letter went on to list the names of the imprisoned bishops: Carevic, Simark, and 28 friars killed at Siroki Brijek. (5) That was more than enough.

The result was that he was attackd not only in the press but even bodily, as once in Zapresic on November 4th, 1945, an assault which the Ministry of Internal Affairs explained as an attack of the church on the OZNA! (Department of National Protection).

At that time Randolf Churchill, son of Winston Churchill and a man most familiar with Tito's regime, wrote the following comment in the London newspaper Daily Telegraph of January 23rd, 1946: "Yugoslav propaganda against the Archbishop of Zagreb has no other purpose than to prepare the ground for a trial against him."

The prelude to the trial was the indictment of the priest Salic, Stepinac's secretary, on September 9th, 1946 in Zagreb after eleven months of investigation on his case. A few days later, on September 17th, it turned into a travesty in the style of Stalin's trials of Zinoviev, Lev Borasavich, Kamener and others before the war. Two of those indicted, Salic and Martincic, implicated Stepinac in the so-called "Crusade trial". The next day the pulbic persecutor Jacov Blazevic gave the order to arrest Stepinac.

All around Croatia mobs gather to attack priests, churches and monasteries, expecting the death sentence for Stepinac. In the meantime, people could not be persuaded to sign the petition against the archbishop. For instance, 7,000 workers and employees of the Zagreb Railway refused.

The director of the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) for Yugoslavia, Hochstetter, wrote at length about this in the Saturday Evening Post of November 21st, 1946.

At the same time bishop Lach was arrested in Koprivica, bishop Bonefacic was attacked in Imotski, bishop Pusic was maltreated while presiding at a confirmation on the island of Hvar. By this the authorities openly declared that the "people have the right to attack their enemies..." As a consequence of these provocations six priests were killed.

In the meantime on September 23rd, 1946 Jacov Blazevic brought charges against Stepinac. Already by September 30th Stepinac was summoned to court. He saw his lawyer Dr. Ivan Politeo only once and only for one hour on September 27th. Indeed the trial was prepared for a whole year and yet Stepinac was given only six days to prepare his defense.

When on September 25th Mgr. Hurley, the papal nuncio in Belgrade approached Tito for his persecution of the church in general and for the trial of Stepinac in particular, Tito replied laconically: "In Yugoslavia everyone is equal before the law."

The following are the main points of the charges brought by Blazevic:

a. ollaboration with the authority of the NDH (so-called independent state of Croatia) and the post of chaplain-general
b. aptism of Serbian Orthodox
c. he "Crusade"
d. concealment of the state documents belonging to the NDH
Allow me to pass over these four points briefly in the light of the facts.

Ad a) It has already been said that in May 1941 the archbishop refused to participate in the signing of the Rome agreements which stipulated that the crown of Zvonimir had to be passed on to the Italian duke of Spoleto, designated thereby as "King of Croatia". When finally in 1943 Stepinac went on his customary visit to the Vatican that he mitigated his attitude towards the authorities. In an issue dated September 3rd, 1943 the German newspaper "Völkischer Beobachter", official organ of Hitler's Nazi party, wrote that the archbishop of Zagreb publicly attacked the regime of the NDH.

In December 1943 the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the NDH complained to the papal legate Marconi that "Stepinac never has consented to the regime of the NDH." It sought to influence the archbishop to change his attitude toward the regime.

I could in this context enumerate many other facts but all of it could be reduced to this that the erstwhile communist regime in Croatia did not differentiate between the regime and the state. Therefore it cruelly persecuted everyone who declared himself for the Croatian state, but against the regime, as was the case with Stepinac.

As for his post of chaplain-general Stepinac was in the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, for which reason his post entailed no responsibility, so that even the Ustashe regime of the NDH held him accountable. The only one who asked him to render account of this was the public prosecutor Jacov Blazevic.

Ad b) Concerning that point in the charges Dr. N. Katicic, the state's defense attorney in Stepinac's trial, expressed himself most judiciously. The documents of this trial are found in the university library in Zagreb and abroad in the library of Father Theodore Dragoun in French. (6)

Ad c) The question of the "Crusade" is a typical example of procedures employed by the OZNA whereby Father Salic and a few others were tortured in order to obtain evidence. These letters were produced as proof of "terrorist activities". The archbishop himself replied to these, among other things, in his famous speech before the court in Zagreb.

Ad d) It is known that before the collapse of the NDH Stepinac refused to accept the regency offered to him in Croatia during the anarchy (Nicija vlast). On the contrary Stepinac consented in the name of the archbishop to keep the official archives of the NDH and immediately informed the new authority in Zagreb of this on May 8th, 1945. He said that the archbishopric had received authorization from the partisan authority itself. In the meantime at the trial itself Jacov Blazevic took care not to have these documents brought out.

At the trial itself the archbishop delivered a speech in his defense on October 3rd, 1946 after which he reverted to silence, answering every question of Jacov Blazevic and Zarko Vimpulsek, president of the court, with a laconic "I have nothing to reply". With such behaviour Stepinac brought Blazevic into a comic and ludicrous situation.

After Stepinac's declaration the defense lawyer Dr. Ivo Politeo perorated in his characteristically remarkable fashion, a courageous and dauntless thing to do in those times. While by his arguments he refuted all the points of the charges, he declared: "There is no question of Aloysius Stepinac's defending the regime of the NDH. But he is talking about the Croatian national state, such as is undoubtedly the right of the Croatian nation. After all in our days the Croatian nation has its own republic"(7).

Upon which Dr. Politeo resumed: "Aloysius Stepinac is the most authentic representative of the Catholic Church in Croatia, even in all of Yugoslavia. Whenever Stjepan Radic, a leader who best plumbed the soul of the Croatian people, would deliver his speeches he would start with the words: Blessed be God and the Blessed Virgin Mary. And in our day we can freely say that every time Aloysius Stepinac takes up the defense of the Catholic Church, the great majority of the Croatian people is with him".

Stepinac was sentenced on October 11, 1946 to sixteen years of forced labour and imprisonment, deprived of his civic rights and his property confiscated.

After his condemnation public opinion around the world was astounded. Thus the erstwhile Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared the following on the day of his sentence: "The circumstances surrounding the indictment and condemnation of the archbishop are more than regrettable. The Catholic Church in Croatia is being persecuted by the inhumane methods of a police regime."

A little later the great French writer Francois Mauriac wrote in "Le Figaro" on December 2nd, 1946. "We have read the declarations and assembled the attestations and are convinced that the Archbishop of Zagreb has been sentenced to sixteen years of imprisonment despite his innocence. If after this Christians are silent then the stones themselves will speak out."

A month after Mauriac's statement Winston Churchill himself spoke in the British Parliament: "This is a political trial with the intention of causing the Catholic Church in Croatia to split with the Vatican. Tito, after all, has openly declared it. One should not forget that the resistance to atheism is stronger when there is outside support. Here I refer to the Pope.

The trial itself has no connection with justice and is indeed a violation of it. Tito's regime cares nothing for justice. The martyrdom of Archbishop Stepinac would be complete should the sentence be applied and executed. God grant that the archbishop endure in spirit and in body all that he will have to endure in order that Christianity may prevail thanks to his courage."

These are only some of the individual reactions. I could enumerate hundreds such as those of Cardinals Spellman and Griffin; of bishop Fulton Sheen and the Serbian Orthodox bishop Milovijevic; of the Jewish National Conference in the U.S.A.; of the Methodist and Presbyterian churches; of Ivan Mestrovic, Vladko Macek, Bogdan Radica; of the Irish parliament and so on.

The same with all the world newspapers, of which we will mention "The New York Times", "The New York Herald Tribune", "The New Leader", "American Journal" and particularly "L'Osservatore Romano" and many Swiss newspapers. It is particularly pertinent to quote The New York Times of October 13th, 1946: "The trial of Archbishop Stepinac was a purely political one with the outcome determined in advance. The trial and sentence of this Croatian prelate are in contradiction with the Yugoslavia's pledge that it will respect human rights and the fundamental liberties of all without reference to race, sex, language and creed. Archbishop Stepinac was sentenced and will be incarcerated as part of the campaign against his church, guilty only of being the enemy of Communism."

It is likewise pertinent to quote the declaration of Lois S. Breier, representative of the American Jewish Committee, uttered on October 13th, 1946 at the Bronx Round Table: "This eminent ecclesiastical dignitary was indicted for collaborating with the Nazism. We Jews deny this. We know from his past that since 1934 he has been a sincere friend of the Jews whom Hitler and his henchmen destroyed. He was one of the very rare men in Europe who raised his voice against the Nazis tyranny at a time when it was very difficult and dangerous for him to do so. This man who is today a victim of a shameful trial, during the whole Nazi epoch publicly and dauntlessly denounced the horrible Nürmberg laws. His opposition to Nazi terrorism never let up. He likewise denounced the infamy of the yellow armbands, asserting that it was an affront to human dignity. It was all to his credit that this procedure was abandoned in Croatia."

In contrast to the reaction of the cultured and free world Tito made this comment to the press in Zagreb in a statement on the trial: "We are accused of having jailed Stepinac only in order to remove him. In the meantime, before passing his sentence, I have already told Mgr. Hurley, the papal nuncio, that he must recall Stepinac himself or we will jail him."

Djilas himself when he was still in power asked Ivan Mestrovic what he thought about the sentence passed on Stepinac. He replied the following: "To tell you the truth I, and not only I, think that Stepinac is a man of integrity and firm character who will not be broken. He was indeed innocent despite his sentence but how often in history has it happened that innocent people have been sentenced out of political necessity."(8)

After he had spent five years in the prison at Lepoglava Stepinac was interned in the end of 1951 in the parish hall in Krasic. Since that time until his martyr's death on February 10th, 1960 there had been many documents revealing the person and the character of the Archbishop of Zagreb. As soon as he arrived in Karsic Stepinac gainsaid the information broadcast over Radio Belgrade: "Radio Belgrade is mistake when it speaks of me as the 'former Archbishop Stepinac'. I am the Archbishop of Zagreb. They can oust me from this country by force alone."

Already at the beginning of 1952 he complained to the correspondent of the Belgian newspaper "La Gazette d'Anvers" with these words: "My freedom is illusory. I cannot freely receive anyone, being under constant surveillance. But I would rather die than yield."

The circumstances of the archbishop's internment considerably aggravated him after the Vatican's secret consistorium of January 12th, 1953 in which Pope Pius XII appointed the Archbishop of Zagreb cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, saying among other things this: "In this celebration we remember with heavy heart our distinguished brother the Archbishop of Zagreb to whom it is not given to share this joy with us and to return to his homeland.

Although he is absent, we embrace him with paternal love. I fervently wish everyone to know that the dignity of cardinal has been bestowed upon him. Our only wish is to reward his great merits and the staunch faith of his nation, which in these troubled times courageously confessed the creed of Catholicism. Our conscience does not permit us to accept the indictment and sentence passed on the Archbishop of Zagreb. Besides this we are answering the wishes and hopes of the whole Catholic world when we elevate to the honour of cardinal of the Catholic Church this exemplary pastor who epitomizes the apostolic creed and the strength of Christianity."

From that time dates the widespread upheaval instigated by the UDBA (Yugoslav Secret Police Intelligence Service) against the clergy and the increasingly difficult position of the interned archbishop, now cardinal, in Krasic. The archbishop's torments and sufferings came to a climax before his very death. Of this we have grim attestations in the letter sent by him from Krasci to the district court in Osijek on December 4th, 1959. (9)

In that historical letter Stepinac among other things said this: "My present state of health is a direct result of that sentence which among other things caused the indignation of the whole world.

The thirteen years of my imprisonment and internment have brought me to the edge of the grave. Up to this date I have undergone about 34 blood transfusions, all in vain. When Dr. Sercer sought to have me sent to the seaside for the purpose of convalescence, the authorities refused. I told the doctors that it is impossible for me to go for a walk, which I have not done for a year, not because it is expressly forbidden, but because the guards follow me everywhere. I fight against the ideology of the communist party because I am conscious of its sins and errors. But it is possible to infer thereby that I am subverting the state? If it is a legitimate battle that the communist party has waged these past 15 years with fire and sword against the Catholic Church, how then can one impute to me as a crime that I have denounced such operations? How then can one consider as a crime my reproaches uttered in defense of the Catholic Church?

Have I perhaps infringed upon the Declaration of Human Rights as the U. N adopted it or has someone else perhaps trampled down the fundamental rights of the human person? Is it not enough that your leader has recognized that I was summoned to the court without just cause and that the sentence was my death warrant, as I have just explained to you?

I must add further that at the present time I am with one foot in the grave and that I will soon be entirely in the grave. But if you should summon me to court or if you should come here with then intention of subjecting me to interrogation, then you ought to know that I will refuse to answer any question. In advance I refuse to accept any responsibility for the scandal, which your interrogation of me in such a state of health may occasion in world opinion. If the regime considers that my death is slow in coming then let it do with me, as it did de facto fourteen years ago.

St. Cyprian gave to his executioner 25 gold pieces before his decapitation. I possess no gold. All that I can bestow is a prayer for him who will execute me that the Lord may forgive him and grant me a peaceful death. My guards can continue to watch me in accordance with your instructions whose purpose is to render my life intolerable. I know my duty. God have mercy, I will accomplish it to the end without hatred for anyone but also without fear of anyone."

Two months after this distressing letter Stepinac breathed his last in Krasic on Wednesday, February 10th, 1960 at 2:15 p.m. according to the testimony of vicar Don Vranekovic who thus describes Stepinac's last moments: "It was 1:55 p.m. when certain nuns entered. They could hardly finger their prayer beads for weeping. He looked at the picture of the Blessed Virgin and just barely repeated the Hail Mary. Exactly at 2 p.m. he cried out loud for his candle and with one hand I helped him to hold the burning candle which he had predicted on Candlemas this very same year that he would very soon need, while with the other I supported his head so as to facilitate his breathing. The nuns were praying and weeping. The archbishop was looking about still fully conscious and praying "May thy will be done.' They were the last words that we heard from him. Three or four painful breaths later he expired. But with a prayer on his lips and in his heart, conscious of his destination, he went to meet God's judgement. This was the death of a righteous man.

The guards admitted into the parish hall only the sacristan Nicholas who with the sound of the great bell announced to the parish the death of a man of God. In one moment the whole of Krasic poured out on to the street and everyone was in black and mourning. People en masse came to the church and prayed. And so it happened that one who beside the name Aloysius also bore the name Victor became a true "Victor" because his soul rests in heaven and his body has come to its rightful place among his predecessor archbishops."(10)

On Saturday, February 13th, 1960 Stepinac was solemnly and honourably buried in the cathedral in Zagreb. About him as contemporary once said "he came to the trial as spiritual shepherd of Croatia and came out of it a national legend and a hero." Here "beside the Holy King"- as A.G. Matos has sung - rests in peace the martyred body of the great man on whose grave "in the darkness of night any woman can come with a heavy cross of one whole nation". And indeed the grave and image of Aloysius Stepinac is the great hope of Croatia.

ONLY THE TRUTH AND ALL THE TRUTH.

Stepinac was the youngest Catholic bishop in the world when he was consecrated on June 24, 1934. Archbishop Bauer died in 1937, and Stepinac automatically succeeded. Actually, he had been administering the archdiocese since 1934. As residential archbishop he continued his dynamic program: founding parishes, introducing religious orders, initiating a Croatian version of the Bible, fostering patriotic celebrations, and promoting pilgrimages.

Unfortunately the outbreak of World War in 1939 obliged him to scale back many of these efforts. The war was inspired by totalitarianism and totalitarianism was the fruit of exaggerated nationalism. Archbishop Stepinac had already experienced this wild nationalism in Italy, and had reached the conclusion that it was "the biggest plague of the human race," in that it fostered interracial hatred rather than interracial love. He saw this plague spreading in his own Balkan states. In 1935, for example, he felt it necessary to protest the Serbian mistreatment of Croatians.

Hitlerian Nazism was the most ideological of extremist nationalisms. Adolf Hitler wanted to purge the European world of ethnic minorities, the "non- Aryans", he called them. Chief of these "debased" ethnic groups, he said, were the Jews. Time would show that, incredibly, he planned to slay the whole Jewish nation. Archbishop Stepinac, on the other hand, advocated a firmly Christian stance: every national and ethnic group should be treated justly. Ethnicity, he said, is not the highest value. "Love for a man's own nation should not make man into a wild animal!" Therefore, after 1935, when the Jews in Hitlerian Germany began to seek refuge elsewhere, the Archbishop of Zagreb welcomed them into Croatia.

He sponsored a special Croatian organization charged with the care of Jewish refugees. He instructed his pastors to help the cause, and reminded prosperous Croats they had a Christian duty to assist the persecuted. In an address to university students, he belittled ideological ethnicity. Nor were his ideas merely personal.

The courageous Pope Pius XI had expressed the same views in encyclical letters on Italian Fascism (Non abbiamo bisogno. July 5, 1931); Nazism (Mit Brennender Sorge. March 1937); and atheistic Communism (Divini Redemptoris. March 10, 1937). Stepinac proved a real leader against totalism: forthright, insistent, unwavering. He won the praise of the Jewish people, but fanatical Yugoslav nationalists, of course, despised him.

The Nazis extended their control into the Balkans in 1941. Croatia had long wanted to be independent again, so on April 10, 1941, it proclaimed its freedom from Serbia, which had assumed oppressive jurisdiction over the various Yugoslav states. Stepinac was an utterly nonpolitical man but he was also a Croatian patriot. He went along with the Croatian independence movement at the start, out of love of country. To lead their new government, the Croats chose Ante Pavelic, head of a patriotic Croatian movement called the Ustasha. Unfortunately, the Ustasha party was fascist in form, and soon demonstrated allegiance to Nazism. When this nationalistic trend became evident, the Archbishop began to denounce publicly its excesses.

For instance, posing as super-Roman Catholics, the Ustasha sought to force the Greek Orthodox Serbians who dwelt in Croatia, to be rebaptized! Stepinac instructed his priests how to counter this campaign. True to his principles he rejected any "ethnic cleansing", demanding fair treatment for all: "Croats, Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox and others." He protested to Pavelic against the mistreatment of Jews and Serbs in a Croatian concentration camp. By his persistence he even got the sentence of one particular Communist reduced from death to life imprisonment.

Meanwhile, Serbian Communists were increasing their control of all the Balkan countries. Under their pressure, Pavelic, by now a bitter enemy of the Archbishop, abandoned Croatia. Taking over the Croat state, the Serbian Communists slew 150,000 of its citizens. Stepinac promptly circulated a pastoral letter in which he listed the Catholic priests who had been executed by the Communists in the takeover. For this action he was arrested on March 24, 1945.

Josip Broz, who as leader of the Yugoslav Communists had assumed the name "Marshal Tito", interviewed Stepinac on September 8, 1945. He told him that he would not have to worry if he declared the Catholic Church in Croatia independent of the pope. The Archbishop refused pointblank to be the agent of a national schism. Tito did not forget that refusal.

Knowing that Croatian Catholicism would suffer from his loyalty to the pope, Stepinac quickly dissolved all Catholic organizations so as not to have to hand over to Tito their membership lists. In a follow-up pastoral letter in September he announced that since the end of World War II, 243 Catholic priests had been executed, 169 imprisoned, and 89 had "disappeared". Having antagonized by his frankness both the Croatian Fascists and the German Nazis, he would now infuriate the Yugoslav Communists. In November 1945 an attempt was made on his life in the suburbs of Zagreb.

Thereafter he restricted his movements to the city itself, but the Communist government launched a vast campaign to destroy his character and pave the way for his execution as a public enemy.

The Archbishop was arrested for the second and last time on January 12, 1956. Now he was given a public "show-trial".. Communist-style.. The charge was his treasonable betrayal of Yugoslavia by supporting the Ustasha Fascists. He was, of course, judged "guilty", sentenced to 16 years of hard labor and deprived of his citizen's rights for 21 years. Allowed to respond to the verdict, Stepinac declared that his conscience was clear. He had acted, he said, not against the people of Yugoslavia but against its Communist regime. He would rather die, he declared, than compromise with godless authority.

Prisoner Stepinac was first remanded to the prison camp of Lepoglava. His jailers did not dare to enforce the penalty of hard labor. The Archbishop was a symbol of Croatian national pride, and they feared that any show of brutality against him might prompt his Croatian fellow prisoners to revolt. Instead, they kept him in an isolated cell, practically in solitary confinement. Meanwhile, in a secret effort to rid the government of such a brave antagonist, the prison officials sought to kill him by administering small doses of poison.

By 1951, the prisoner was very ill: not, apparently, from the poison but from "Vasques' disease", a rare ailment characterized by overproduction of red corpuscles. His guards therefore transferred him to a rectory in Kosic, not far from his birthplace. Even so, he was kept in rigorous house arrest. The Vasques' disease required that he be bled regularly. At one point he joked, "I have already shed 26 liters of my blood for the Church!"

Stepinac accommodated himself patiently to this restrictive regime. In addition to maintaining a regular devotional life he carried on a vast personal correspondence. His jailers confiscated a large percentage of his 5000 letters, but a significant number reached their addresses and provide us with a reflection of his attitude. His mood was uniformly peaceful and forgiving. The fall of Communism, he held, was inevitable. He prayed constantly for his guards. Content with his status as a prisoner as something to be accepted as a duty, he knew that the Communist government could take his life at any time, but he remained, as he said, "without a trace of hatred or revenge to anyone, but also without fear."

As time went on, Marshal Tito, having rejected the control of Soviet Communism, was courting support from the Western powers. He therefore wanted Stepinac to be forgotten. But Pope Pius XII had a unique way of bringing him back into the headlines. In 1952, he announced his intention to bestow the cardinalate on Stepinac and several other high churchmen at a rite scheduled for January 12, 1953.

Tito, infuriated by the news, broke off diplomatic relations with the Holy See. The Archbishop was not permitted, of course, to attend the papal consistory of January 12, but his very absence was another indictment of the Serbian Communist dictator.

Cardinal Stepinac was thereafter listed among the cardinals in the Vatican directory, but described as "impeded" in the exercise of the archiepiscopal office. (Prisoner Stepinac at least had the satisfaction of receiving the red robe of his Roman office in 1954, through an intriguing secret operation of devoted American and Croatian friends. Presumably he never wore it while alive.)

In 1957 Cardinal Stepinac wrote a "Spiritual Testament". In it he explicitly forgave all his persecutors. Two years later, the government expressed a desire to interrogate him once more. In 1946, he replied, the regime had deprived an innocent man of his civic personality. The State could still kill his physical personality if it chose, but he would still harbor no hatred against it. But no more interviews!

Aloysius Stepinac died of his blood ailment on February 19, 1960. His last words were the prayer, "Thy will be done." Now the Communists, concerned that his body might show traces of the attempt to poison him, had his internal organs destroyed. They also intensified their campaign to blacken his reputation as a Fascist conspirator and enemy of his people. They feared that any effort to canonize him would put them in a bad light, as indeed it would have. They did grant permission for his burial in the Zagreb cathedral.

Once he was entombed in the cathedral, Cardinal Stepinac's remains became a focus of pilgrimages for Croatians who had venerated him as a saint while yet alive. Although the Communists were still in power, the local church authorities began secretly to collect documentation relative to eventual beatification and canonization.

Russian Communism collapsed in 1989. On January 2, 1990, the Yugoslav Communist Party gave up its constitutional authority to rule the country. Croatia once more declared its independence on June 25, 1991. One of the earliest actions taken by the newly elected Croatian parliament was to pass a law annulling all Communist-type trials that had taken place during the Tito regime. This legislation cancelled the 1946 judgment against Stepinac and the penalties it had imposed upon him. The Parliament went further. It declared that the only reason for his conviction had been his refusal to lead the Croatian Catholic Church into schism from Rome.

The cause for the Cardinal's sainthood could now proceed without interruption. His body was examined by experts from the Vatican, and traces of poison were found in the bones. The archives of the totalitarian states, now open for study, gave further information. Nazi records showed that Hitler had wanted pro-Nazi Ante Pavelic to get rid of Stepinac because of his opposition to the liquidation of the Jews. Yugoslav Communist records indicated that Marshal Tito had branded the Archbishop as an "enemy of the State" because of his "excessive influence" over the common people. It turned out that the only thing that prevented his actual assassination was the veto of a Croatian Communist ringleader.

That was enough for the Holy See. On November 11, 1997, Pope John Paul II accepted the judgment of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, that Aloysius Stepinac deserved the title "martyr" for having accepted death in a forgiving spirit rather than reject the primacy of Peter over the universal Church. (Death by imprisonment has often been accepted by the Holy See as a type of martyrdom.)

The Pope decided to beatify Stepinac on October 3, 1998. This in itself was a courageous decision. The Serbian "Black Legend" about the Archbishop as "pro-Fascist" had been circulated so long that many Yugoslavs believed it true. When the forthcoming beatification was announced, the Croatian bishops had to field widespread questions about the fitness of beatifying a political "criminal". The hierarchy patiently refuted this calumny by pointing out that Stepinac had indeed been a distinguished patriot, yet a nonpolitical defender of the human rights of all, an opponent of every brand of totalitarianism. Meanwhile the Jews of Croatia firmly rejected the accusation of the Cardinal as pro-Nazi, praising him for his efforts to defend their people and other minorities persecuted in Croatia under the Swastika.

Addressing the enthusiastic thousands who attended the beatification in Croatia on October 3, Pope John Paul praised Stepinac for his evenhanded opposition to the excesses of fascism, nazism and communism. His life, said the Pope, should serve as a compass to Christians faced by comparable political crises.

There were many Catholic martyrs and confessors during the hot war and the cold war, and we may be sure that more of them will be added to the calendar of the saints. We have given such extensive coverage to the cause of Blessed Aloysius Stepinac because he was called on to stand fast against all Europe's totalitarian ideologies: the Fascist, the Nazi, and the Communist.

--Father Robert F. McNamara

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