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| Name | Aloysius Stepinac |
|---|---|
| Title | Cardinal Archbishop of Zagreb |
| Caption | Blessed Aloysius Stepinac |
| Diocese | Archdiocese of Zagreb |
| See | Zagreb |
| Enthroned | 1938. |
| Ended | 1960. |
| Predecessor | Antun Bauer |
| Successor | Franjo Šeper |
| Ordination | 26 October 1930 |
| Consecration | 7 December 1937 |
| Cardinal | 29 November 1952 |
| Rank | Cardinal archbishop |
| Birth name | Alojzije Viktor Stepinac |
| Birth date | May 08, 1898 |
| Birth place | Brezarić near Krašić,Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia,Austria-Hungary(today's Croatia) |
| Death date | February 10, 1960 |
| Death place | Krašić, SR Croatia,SFR Yugoslavia(today's Croatia) |
| Buried | Zagreb Cathedral |
| Nationality | Croat |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Residence | Krašić |
| Occupation | Catholic priest |
| Alma mater | Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum |
Aloysius Viktor Stepinac (, 8 May 1898 –10 February 1960) was a Croatian Catholic cardinal and Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 to 1960. In 1998 he was declared a martyr and beatified by Pope John Paul II.
Stepinac was ordained on October 26, 1930 by archbishop Giuseppe Palica, and in 1931 he became a parish curate in Zagreb. He established the archdiocesan branch of Caritas in 1931, and was appointed coadjutor to the see of Zagreb in 1934. When Archbishop Anton Bauer died on December 7, 1937, Stepinac succeeded him as the Archbishop of Zagreb. During World War II, on 6 April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany, who established the Ustaše-led Independent State of Croatia. As archbishop of the puppet state's capital, Stepinac had close associations with the Ustaše leaders during the Nazi occupation, had issued proclamations celebrating the NDH, and welcomed the Ustaše leaders. Stepinac also objected against 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. biased against the archbishop; however, some claim the trial was "carried out with proper legal procedure".
After foreign and domestic pressure, Stepinac was released from Lepoglava prison. In 1952 he was appointed cardinal by Pope Pius XII. Stepinac died while still under confinement in his parish, almost certainly as the result of poisoning by his Communist captors.
King Alexander was assassinated in Marseilles in 1934, and Stepinac along with Bishops Antun Akšamović, Dionizije Njaradi and Gregorij Rožman were given special permission from the Holy See to attend the funeral in an Orthodox church. Croatian politician Ante Trumbić spoke to Stepinac on several occasions in 1934. On his relation with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he recorded that Stepinac has "loyalty to the state as it is, but with the condition that the state acts towards the Catholic Church as it does to all just denominations and that it guarantees them freedom". On July 30 he received French deputy Robert Schuman, whom he told: "There is no justice in Yugoslavia. [...] The Catholic Church endures much".
In 1936, he climbed the Mount Triglav, the tallest peak in Yugoslavia. In 2006 this climb was commemorated by a memorial chapel being built near the summit. In 1937 he led a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (then the British Mandate of Palestine). During the pilgrimage he blessed an altar dedicated to the martyr Nikola Tavelić (who was beatified then, but later canonized).
On December 7, 1937 Archbishop Anton Bauer died, and though still below the age of forty. Stepinac succeeded him as the Archbishop of Zagreb. During Lent in 1938, Stepinac told a group of students from the University of Zagreb: "Love towards one's own nation cannot turn a man into a wild animal, which destroys everything and calls for reprisal, but it must ennoble him, so that his own nation secures respect and love for other nations." In 1938, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia held its last election before the outbreak of World War II. Stepinac voted for Vlatko Maček's opposition list, while Radio Belgrade spread the false information that he had voted for Milan Stojadinović's Yugoslav Radical Union. In the latter half of 1938, Stepinac had an operation for acute appendicitis.
In response to growing tensions in Europe, in 1936 Stepinac helped sponsor a committee aiding Jewish refuges from Austria and Germany. Then in April 1939 Dr. Dragutin Hren spoke to Stepinac about a group of Croatian Discalced Carmelite nuns from Mayerling who were being pressured by the German Nazis. Stepinac decided to accept the group and place them at a mansion in Brezovica. Stepinac spent October 6, 1939 in Ivanić-Grad where he administered confirmation for the local parish. In 1940, he received Prince Paul at St. Mark's Church as the prince arrived in Zagreb to curry support for the Cvetković-Maček Agreement. Under Stepinac, Pope Pius XII declared 1940 as a Jubilee year for Croats to celebrate 1300 years of Christianity among the Croats. In 1940, the Franciscan Order celebrated 700 years in Croatia and the order's minister general Leonardo Bello came to Zagreb for the event. During his visit Stepinac joined the Franciscan Third Order, on September 29, 1940.
As the archbishop of the capital, Stepinac enjoyed close associations with the Ustaše leaders.
However, during the war on several occasions Stepinac criticized the Ustaše atrocities to certain leaders in private, but continued to give communion to Ustaše leaders and made no public comments about their activities, ignoring complaints about the atrocities and forced conversions, particularly those described to him in great detail by Bishop Alojzije Mišić of Mostar.
Upon hearing news of the Glina massacre, on May 14, 1941 Stepinac sent a letter to Pavelić, requesting that "on the whole territory of the Independent State of Croatia, not one Serb is killed if he is not proven guilty for what he has deserved death." When hearing of the racial laws being enacted, he asked: "We...appeal to you to issue regulations so that even in the framework of antisemitic legislation, and similar legislation concerning Serbs, the principles of human dignity be preserved."
In a sermon on October 25, 1942, he further commentated on racial acceptance:
We affirm then that all peoples and races descend from God. In fact, there exists but one race...The members of this race can be white or black, they can be separated by oceans or live on the opposing poles, [but] they remain first and foremost the race created by God, according to the precepts of natural law and positive Divine law as it is written in the hearts and minds of humans or revealed by Jesus Christ, the son of God, the sovereign of all peoples.
After the release of left-wing activist Ante Ciliga from Jasenovac in January 1943, Stepinac requested a meeting with him to learn about what was occurring at the camp. He also wrote directly to Pavelić, saying on 24 February 1943, "The Jasenovac camp itself is a shameful stain on the honor of the [Independent State of Croatia]."
Later Stepinac advised individual priests to admit Orthodox believers to the Catholic Church if their lives were in danger, such that this conversion had no validity, allowing them to return to their faith once the danger passed. leaders, and other Catholic priests at the funeral of Marko Došen.]] Stepinac was involved directly and indirectly in efforts to save Jews from persecution. Amiel Shomrony, alias Emil Schwartz, was the personal secretary of Miroslav Šalom Freiberger (the chief rabbi in Zagreb) until 1942. In the actions for saving Jews, Shomrony acted as the mediator between the chief rabbi and Stepinac. He later stated that he considered Stepinac "truly blessed" since he did the best he could for the Jews during the war. Stepinac and the papal nuncio to Belgrade mediated with Royal Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops, urging that the Yugoslav Jews be allowed to take refuge in the occupied Balkan territories to avoid deportation. He also arranged for Jews to travel via these territories to the safe, neutral states of Turkey and Spain, along with Istanbul-based nuncio Angelo Roncalli. He sent some Jews for safety to Rev. Dragutin Jeish, who was killed during the war by the Ustaše on suspicion of supporting the Partisans.
In 1942, officials from Hungary lobbied to attach the Hungarian-occupied Međimurje ecclesiastically to a diocese in Hungary. Stepinac opposed this and received guarantees from the Holy See that diocesan boundaries would not change during the war. On October 26, 1943 the Germans killed the archbishop's brother Mijo Stepinac.
Throughout the war, Stepinac's Catholic publications in Zagreb remained openly supportive of the Ustaše regime. The Catholic Church in Croatia has also had to contend with criticism of what some has seen as a passive stance towards the Ustaša policy of religious conversion whereby some Serbs - but not the intelligentsia element - were able to escape other persecution by adopting the Catholic faith. While Stepinac did suspend a number of priests, he only had the authority to do so within his own diocese; he had no power to suspend other priests or bishops outside of Zagreb.
During the same period the archbishop almost certainly had ties with the post-war Ustaše (fascist) guerrilas, the "Crusaders", On October 20 Stepinac published a letter in which he made the claim that "273 clergymen had been killed" since the Partisan take-over, "169 had been imprisoned", and another "89 were missing and presumed dead". Similar numbers were later published.
In response to this letter Tito spoke out publicly against Stepinac for the first time by writing an editorial on 25 October in the communist party's newspaper Borba accusing Stepinac of declaring war on the fledgling new Yugoslavia. Consequently on November 4 Stepinac had stones thrown at him by a crowd of Partisans in Zaprešić. Tito had established "brotherhood and unity" as the federation's over-arching objective and central policy, one which he did not want threatened by internal agitation. In addition, with the escalating Cold War conflict and increased concerns over both Western and Soviet infiltration (see Tito-Stalin split), the Yugoslav government did not tolerate further internal subversion within the potentially fragile new federation. Stepinac refused to break from the Vatican, and continued to publicly condemn the communist government. Tito, however, was reluctant to bring him to trial, in spite of condemning evidence which was available. He went on to state that "My conscience is clear and calm. If you will not give me the right, history will give me that right", and that he did not intend to defend himself or appeal against a conviction, and that he is prepared to take ridicule, disdain, humiliation and death for his beliefs. He claimed that the military vicariate in the Independent State of Croatia was created to address the needs of the faithful among the soldiers and not for the army itself, nor as a sign of approval of all action by the army. He stated that he was never an Ustaša and that his Croatian nationalism stemmed from the nation's grievances in the Serb-dominated Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and that he never took part in any anti-government or terrorist activities against the state or against Serbs.
Stepinac also mentioned 260-270 priests were summarily executed by the Allied Yugoslav army for collaboration, which was widespread among the Catholic clergy in many parts of the NDH, and that these summary death sentences "uncivilized". He also spoke against the nationalization of Church property and the newly implemented division of church and state (prevention of Church involvement in education, press, charitable work, and teaching of religion in school), as well as alleged intimidation and molestation of clergy. He also complained against atheism, spoke out against evolution, materialism, and communism in general.
Stepinac was arrested on September 18, and was only given the indictment on the 23rd−meaning his defense were given only six to seven days to prepare.
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.
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.... In March 1947 the president of the People's Republic of Croatia Vladimir Bakarić made an official visit to Lepoglava prison to see Stepinac. He offered him to sign an amnesty plea to Yugoslavia's leader Josip Broz who would in turn allow Stepinac to leave the country. Instead, Stepinac gave Bakarić a request to Broz that he be retried by a neutral court. Dragutin Saili had been in charge of the pilgrimage on the part of the Yugoslav authorities. At a meeting of the Central Committee on August 1, 1947 Saili was chastised for allowing pictures of Stepinac to be carried during the pilgrimage, as long as the pictures were alongside those of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz. Marko Belinić responded to the report by saying, "Saili's path, his poor cooperation with the Local Committee, is a deadly thing''". On November 11, 1951 Jewish-American Cyrus L. Sulzberger from the New York Times visited Stepinac in Lepoglava. He won the Pulitzer Prize for the interview. A visiting congressional delegation from the United States, including Clement J. Zablocki and Edna F. Kelly, pressed to see Stepinac in late November 1951. Their request was denied by the Yugoslav authorities, but Josip Broz Tito assured the delegation that Stepinac would be released within a month.Aloysius Stepinac eventually served five years of his sixteen-year sentence for high treason in the Lepoglava prison, where he received preferred treatment in recognition of his clerical status. He was allocated two cells for personal use and an additional cell as his private chapel, while being exempt of all hard labor. Alojzije Stepinac was released in a conciliatory gesture by the Yugoslav Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito, on the condition that he either retired to Rome or was confined to his home parish of Krašić. He refused to leave Yugoslavia and opted to live in Krašić, where he was transferred on December 5, 1951. He stated that: "They will never make me leave unless they put me on a plane by force and take me over the frontier. It is my duty in these difficult times to stay with the people."
At a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia on October 5, 1951 Ivan Krajačić said, "In America they are printing the book Crvena ruža na oltaru of 350 pages, in which is described the entire Stepinac process. Religious education is particularly recently being taught on a large scale. We should do something about this. We could ban religious education. We could ban religious education in schools, but they will then pass it into their churches". On January 31, 1952 the Yugoslav authorities abolished religious education in state-run public schools, as part of the programme of separating church and state in Yugoslavia. In April, Stepinac told a journalist from Belgium's La Libertea, "I am greatly concerned about Catholic youth. In schools they are carrying out intensive communist propaganda, based on negating the truth". Yugoslavia then severed diplomatic relations with the Vatican on December 17, 1952.
Pius XII wrote to Stepinac and three other jailed prelates (Stefan Wyszyński, József Mindszenty and Josef Beran) on June 29, 1956 urging their supporters to remain loyal. On June 2, 1959 he wrote in a letter to Ivan Meštrović: "I likely will not live to see the collapse of communism in the world due to my poor health. But I am absolutely certain of that collapse."
Death and legacy controversies
In 1953, Stepinac was diagnosed with polycythemia, a rare blood disorder involving the excess of red blood cells, causing him to joke "I am suffering from an excess of reds." On 10 February 1960 at the age of 61, Stepinac died of a thrombosis. Pope John XXIII held a requiem mass for him soon after at St. Peter's Basilica. He was buried in Zagreb during a service in which the protocols appropriate to his senior clerical status were, with Tito's permission, fully observed. Cardinal Franz König was among those who attended the funeral.Notwithstanding that Stepinac died peacefully at home, he quickly became a martyr in the view of his supporters and many other Catholics. After his death, traces of poison were found in Stepinac's bones, leading many to believe he had been poisoned by his captors.
When in 1943 Stepinac travelled to the Vatican, he came into contact with the Croatian artist Ivan Meštrović. According to Meštrović, Stepinac asked him whether Croatian leader Ante Pavelić knew about crimes being committed in the state. When Meštrović replied that he must know everything, Stepinac reportedly broke into tears. Meštrović did not return to Yugoslavia until 1959 and upon his return met with Stepinac again, who was then under house arrest. Meštrović went on to sculpt a bust of Stepinac after his death which reads: "Archbishop Stepinac was not a man of idle words, but rather, he actively helped every person─when he was able, and to the extent he was able. He made no distinctions as to whether a man in need was a Croat or a Serb, whether he was a Catholic or an Orthodox, whether he was Christian or non-Christian. All the attacks upon him be they the product of misinformation, or the product of a clouded mind, cannot change this fact....". Stepinac's beatification process began on October 9, 1981. The Catholic Church declared Stepinac a martyr on November 11, 1997, and on October 3, 1998 Pope John Paul II declared that Stepinac had indeed been martyred while on pilgramage to Marija Bistrica to beatify him. John Paul had earlier determined that where a candidate for sainthood had been martyred, his/her cause could be advanced without the normal requirement for evidence of a miraculous intercession by the candidate. Accordingly he beatified the late cardinal after saying these words: One of the outstanding figures of the Catholic Church, having endured in his own body and his own spirit the atrocities of the Communist system, is now entrusted to the memory of his fellow countrymen with the radiant badge of martyrdom. On the other hand many non-Catholics have remained unconvinced about Stepinac's martyrdom and about his saintly qualities in general. The beatification re-ignited old controversies between Catholicism and Communism and between Serbs and Croats. The Jewish community in Croatia, some members of which had been helped by Stepinac during World War II, did not oppose his beatification but the Simon Wiesenthal Center asked for it to be deferred until the wartime conduct of Stepinac had been further investigated. The Vatican had no reaction, though some Croats expressed irritation. The declaration was passed, along with a similar one about the death of Croatian communist official Andrija Hebrang. In 1998, the Croatian National Bank released commemmoratives 500 kuna gold and 150 kuna silver coins.
In 2007, the municipality of Marija Bistrica began on a project called Stepinac's Path, which would build pilgrimage paths linking places significant to the cardinal: Krašić, Kaptol in Zagreb, Medvednica, Marija Bistrica, and Lepoglava. The Aloysius Stepinac Museum opened in Zagreb in 2007.
Croatian football international Dario Šimić wore a t-shirt with Stepinac's image on it under his jersey during the country's UEFA Euro 2008 game against Poland, which he revealed after the game.
Nominations to Righteous Among the Nations
Stepinac was unsuccessfully recommended on two occasions by two individual Croatian Jews to be added to the list of the Righteous Among the Nations. Amiel Shomrony (previously known in Croatia as Emil Schwarz), the secretary to the war-time head rabbi Miroslav Šalom Freiberger, nominated Stepinac in 1970. He was again nominated in 1994 by Igor Primorac. Amiel Shomrony has recently challenged the Serb lobby for preventing the inclusion of Stepinac into Yad Vashem's Righteous list. Stepinac's diary, discovered in 1950 (too late to be used in his trial), was confiscated by the Yugoslav authorities; it currently resides in Belgrade in the archives of the Federal Ministry of Justice, but only the extracts quoted by Jakov Blažević, the public prosecutor at Stepinac's trial, in his memoir Mač a ne Mir are available.The official transcript of Stepinac's trial Sudjenje Lisaku, Stepincu etc. was published in Zagreb in 1946, but contains substantial evidence of alteration. All other primary sources available to researchers only indirectly focus on Stepinac.
See also
Archbishop Stepinac High School - A Catholic High School in White Plains, New York (USA) named for Archbishop Stepinac. Includes a shrine featuring a bust of Stepinac by the Croatian artist Ivan Meštrović. József Mindszenty Óscar Romero John Fisher
Bibliography
Alexander, Stella. 1987. Triple Myth: a life of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac. Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs. Butler, Herbert. 1990. The Sub-prefect Should Have Held His Tongue. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. Cornwell, John. 1999. Hitler's Pope. London: Viking. Tanner, Marcus. 1997. Croatia. New Haven: Yale University Press.
References
in the Church of Virgin Mary of Lourdes in Rijeka]]
External links
Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac Online Book: Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac - Basic Facts about His Person and Work by Simun Sito Coric Patron Saints Index - Blessed Alojzije Stepinac "The Case of Archbishop Stepinac", by Sava N. Kosanovic, Ambassador of the FNR Yugoslavia in Washington Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, A Servant of God and the Croatian People Cardinal Stepinac Village (Retirement & nursing home) Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac and saving the Jews in Croatia during the WW2 © by Darko Zubrinic, Zagreb (1997) Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac - biography Glas Koncila
Category:1898 births Category:1960 deaths Category:People from Krašić Category:Croatian cardinals Category:Beatified people Category:Burials at Zagreb Cathedral Category:Cardinals created by Pope Pius XII Category:Croatian people of World War II Category:Roman Catholic Church in Croatia Category:Roman Catholic archbishops of Zagreb Category:20th-century venerated Christians Category:Croatian Roman Catholic archbishops Category:Deaths from thrombosis
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