I disagree. He managed to pull off what no others could for almost 900 years, and with the odds so stacked against him.
Yes, he did -- by inviting back all the symbols of genocidal WWII Nazi Croatia... the flag, the money, and the exiled war criminals who were installed into positions of power. And then by restoring the same alliance with Germany that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies the last time around. And then adding to that list of victims with Operation Storm, killing and driving out thousands of unarmed, innocent Serb civilian victims from the Krajina.
If you call that being "a good Catholic", then I think God would be more pleased with "a tree worshipper"!
I feel sorry for the Croat Catholic with a soul (my cousin was one), who now has to deal with the fact that "the Father of his Country" was a murderous, goose-stepping, Neo-Nazi war criminal. How can anything ever be right when it was founded on something so wrong and evil?
Germany, with Tudjman's help, resurrected Croatia for its own purposes. You can revel in that only because "the bill for German services" has not yet been presented. Wait until it is. And then will Croatia join Germany against the US as it has two World Wars before? Probably!