Posted on 02/16/2014 4:18:32 PM PST by Ravnagora
ZAGREB - Alen Budaj, an associate of the Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, has said that the coutries that are legal successors to the former Yugoslavia, Serbia in particular, must send a strong diplomatic protest to the Vatican over its intention declare Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac a saint.
The Vatican has officially confirmed that Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac will soon be declared a saint.
Immediately upon the entering of the Germans in Zagreb, on April 10, 1941, Stepinac supported the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC), which was declared a state by the Ustasha (Croatian fascist movement), and in 1945, he fought for the preservation of the regime headed by Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic.
Budaj believes that a protest against sanctifying Stepinac, who took part in the creation and implementation of NDH ideas during World War II, needs to be made even at the cost of breaking off diplomatic relations with the Vatican.
“I hope that the Serbian Orthodox Church will react, since this particular decision made by the Vatican is also undermining the ecumenical relations between the two churches,” Budaj said, stressing that Israel and many Jewish institutions in the territory of the former Yugoslavia should react to this strongly and immediately.
It is not at all surprising that the new Pope Francis is proclaiming Stepinac a saint, as that road was mapped by the Catholic Church in Croatia immediately after the verdict against Stepinac had been delivered, said Budaj, who is also director of the Margel Institute, a Jewish NGO in Zagreb.
On October 11, 1946, Stepinac was found guilty of high treason and war crimes - for his relations with the Croatian Ustasha and collaboration with the occupation forces - and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
In 1951, he was transferred to his native village of Krasic, where he spent the remainder of his life confined to his home parish until his death on February 10, 1960. As a sign of support, the Vatican awarded Stepinac the title of cardinal in 1952.
Budaj pointed out that already during his trial, the West and the Catholic world considered Stepinac to be a martyr and innocent victim of Communist persecution, that Stepinac has been made a cardinal while alive and beatified after death, and is now to be declared a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
He would be the only saint to receive a high distinction from the Ustasha headman, and that while being the Archbishop of Zagreb, for a merit he earned as a helper of a fascist, criminal regime, Budaj said, adding that a report about it appeared in Narodne Novine, the official mouthpiece of the NDH.
“While Monsignor Svetozar Ritig, prebendary of the Zagreb Chapter (Kaptol), saw in Pavelic an evil in the making as early as in 1929, Stepinac wholeheartedly greeted and served Pavelic. Ritig has no street (named after him) in Zagreb, as he was an anti-fascist, while Stepinac has all the honors as a clerical fascist,” said Budaj.
Budaj said it is no big wonder that Stepinac will be canonized, as the Vatican was recognized as a state by fascist Benito Mussolini's Lateran Treaty in 1929.
“I do not want to hear about Stepinac’s great merit in ‘saving’ Jews, because he was all the while drawing up in the official Catholic press Pavelic’s racial provisions by which the Jews were taken to concentration camps.
I do not want to hear about his efforts to save certain Serbs, because he was on the Committee of Three in charge of conversions to Catholicism and I do not want to hear about his being a martyr and saint because he left his own Catholic priests to be tortured by the Ustasha in Jasenovac (Ustasha concentration camp) just because they were under suspicion of being opponents of the regime,” Budaj said.
He pointed out that Stepinac never regretted over violent conversion of Serbs into Catholicism or over Jews being forcibly taken to be baptized, even though he knew it would not save them from being taken to the camp.
“He never repented his Catholic ‘baptized souls’ burning Jewish and Serbian churches, plundering around as wild hordes, raping and killing as crusader armies once did across the Holy Land,” Budaj said in an interview for SRNA news agency that was published in Banja Luka-based Nezavisne Novine.
He added that Stepinac knew about it all, but nevertheless bestowed blessings on the NDH and served it, even after its collapse, hiding Ustasha criminals, stolen Jewish gold and Ustasha state archive in the Zagreb Kaptol.
“To me, as a free man, Stepinac will never be a saint, as I am not bound by decisions of the Pope, nor have I lost my mind to believe in that fraudulent alchemy of miraculous transformation of a criminal into a saint,” said Budaj.
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A fascist collaboration with the Germans. Its a shame the Partisans never hanged him.
Do you believe the verdicts of all show trials, or just Stepinac’s?
Woe to those who swallow Communist propaganda.
The Yugoslav Partisans (communists) did not hang Stepinac because the Yugo Partisans were collaborating with the Fascist Croatian Ustashe.
_________________
Immediately upon the entering of the Germans in Zagreb, on April 10, 1941, Stepinac supported the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC), which was declared a state by the Ustasha (Croatian fascist movement), and in 1945, he fought for the preservation of the regime headed by Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic. Budaj believes that a protest against sanctifying Stepinac, who took part in the creation and implementation of NDH ideas during World War II, needs to be made even at the cost of breaking off diplomatic relations with the Vatican.
PFL
Much ado about nothing. All Christians are saints. Nothing special about proclaiming some better than others. Hocus pocus I say.
Isn’t this the same Simon Weisanthal Center whose Rabbi Abraham Cooper boycotted Pope John Paul II’s trip to Los Angeles?
Despite initially welcoming the Independent State of Croatia, Stepinac subsequently condemned the Nazi-aligned state’s atrocities against Jews and Serbs. He objected to the persecution of Jews and Nazi laws, helped Jews and others to escape and criticized Ustaše atrocities in front of Zagreb Cathedral in 1943.
After the war he publicly condemned the new Yugoslav government and its actions during World War II, especially for murders of priests by Communist militants.
-wiki
But feel free to keep buying the BS communist show trial.
The trial was immediately condemned by the Holy See. All Catholics who had taken part in the court proceedings, including most of the jury members, were excommunicated by Pope Pius XII who referred to the process as the “saddest trial”
In the United States, one of Stepinac’s biggest supporters was the Archbishop of Boston, Richard Cushing, who delivered several sermons in support of him. U.S. Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson on October 11, 1946 bemoaned the conditions in Yugoslavia and stated his regret of the trial.
Support also came from the American Jewish Committee, who put out a declaration that On October 13, 1946, The New York Times wrote that,
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.
The National Conference of Christians and Jews at the Bronx Round Table adopted a unanimous resolution on October 13 condemning the trial:
This great churchman has been charged with being a collaborator with the Nazis. We Jews deny that. We know from his record since 1934, that he was a true friend of the Jews...This man, now the victim of a sham trial, all during the Nazi regime spoke out openly, unafraid, against the dreadful Nuremberg Laws, and his opposition to the Nazi terrorism was never relaxed.
In Britain, on 23 October 1946, Mr Richard Stokes MP declared in the House of Commons that,
[T]he archbishop was our constant ally in 1941, during the worst of the crisis, and thereafter, at a time when the Orthodox Church, which is now comme il faut with the Tito Government, was shaking hands with Mussolini....
On November 1, 1946 Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons on the subject of the trial, expressing “great sadness” at the result.
This trial was prepared in the political sphere. It was for the purpose of dividing the Catholic Church in Croatia from its leadership at the Vatican. Tito has openly expressed this purpose....The trial was not based on justice, but was an outrage on justice. Tito’s regime has no interest in justice. It seeks only to stifle opposition....
[Stepinac] 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.
I’ll go with Winston Churchill on this one. You can go with Tito and the communists.
Credit to wiki
Who is Alen Budaj? Other that this same article repreinted in various outlets, the name doesn’t exist.
The attacks on the Catholic church are amazing. Prayers friends.
Amen, brother, amen.
Stepinac was Beatified in 1998. He was jailed and poisoned by communists. That is as saintly as it gets. May God be merciful and bring justice to those who spread calumny, lies, against those who serve Him and His church, and all Christians being persecuted. God’s justice is swift, that’s all we need to remember.
The article above basically adopts the Communist line entirely: Stepinac "fought for" the Pavelic regime "in 1945"?
Pavelic didn't even fight for his own regime in 1945. By spring he fled Croatia for the US Occupation Zone.
All of his actual supporters scattered like roaches.
Why did Stepinac stay behind? He certainly could have fled.
Pavelic ran and hid, because he knew what he had done.
Stepinac stayed to face down the Communists. He endured a show trial. He didn't have to. He stayed for his flock, not for the coward Pavelic.
Oh, and I know that not only Communists lie about Stepinac.
So do socialists. And other leftists. And Serbian nationalists. And anti-Catholics of all stripes.
It was always that way.
In 2004 (age 27) he was researching family history and discovered a war criminal and got a $5,000 reward.
http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=article&articleid=12463
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