Propaganda efforts have been made to condemn the Vatican in relation to the crimes of the Ustashe, going so far as to claim the Vatican was complicit in these crimes against humanity. Professor Ronald Rychlak’s research set the record straight:
Croatia came into being during the war. On March 25, 1941, Italy, Germany, and Yugoslavia signed an agreement bringing Yugoslavia into the Axis. Two days later, a group of Serbian nationalists seized control of Belgrade and announced that they were siding with the Allies. As a result, Hitler invaded Yugoslavia. Croat Fascists then declared an independent Croatia. The new Croat government was led by Ante Pavelic and his supporters, the Ustashe.
There had been a long history of hatred in this part of the world between Croats (predominantly Catholic) and Serbs (mainly Orthodox). The Ustashi government exacted revenge against the Serbs for years of perceived discrimination. According to some accounts, as many as 700,000 Serbs were slaughtered. Among the charges against the Catholic Church in Croatia are that it engaged in forcible conversions, that Church officials hid Croat Nazis after the war, that Nazi gold made its way from Croatia to the Vatican, and that Catholic leaders in Croatia supported the governments brutality toward the Serbs.
While some of these charges are recent in origin (and from suspect sources), there is no credible evidence that the Pope or the Vatican behaved inappropriately. For instance, the Vatican expressly repudiated forcible conversions in a memorandum, dated January 25, 1942, from the Vatican Secretariat of State to the Legation of Yugoslavia to the Holy See (addressing conversions in Croatia). In August of that year, the Grand Rabbi of Zagreb, Dr. Miroslav Freiberger, wrote to Pius XII expressing his “most profound gratitude” for the “limitless goodness that the representatives of the Holy See and the leaders of the Church showed to our poor brothers.” [Actes et Documents, vol. VIII, no. 441. See also id. vol. VIII, no. 537 (report on Vatican efforts to alleviate the sad conditions of the Croatian Jews); id. vol. VIII, no. 473 (efforts to find sanctuary for Croatian Jews in Italy); id. vol. VIII, no. 557 (insistence on “a benevolent treatment toward the Jews”).] In October, a message went out from the Vatican to its representatives in Zagreb regarding the “painful situation that spills out against the Jews in Croatia” and instructing them to petition the government for “a more benevolent treatment of those unfortunates.” In December 1942, Dr. Freiberger wrote again, expressing his confidence “in the support of the Holy See.”
The Cardinal Secretary of State’s notes reflect that Vatican petitions were successful in getting a suspension of “dispatches of Jews from Croatia” by January 1943, but Germany was applying pressure for “an attitude more firm against the Jews.” Maglione went on to outline various steps that could be taken by the Holy See to help the Jews. Another instruction from the Holy See to its unofficial representatives (since there were no diplomatic relations) in Zagreb directing them to work on behalf of the Jews went out on March 6, 1943. On September 24, 1943, Alex Easterman, the British representative of the World Jewish Congress, contacted Msgr. William Godfrey, the apostolic delegate in London and informed him that about 4,000 Jewish refugees from Croatia were safely evacuated to an island in the Adriatic Sea. “I feel sure that efforts of your Grace and of the Holy See have brought about this fortunate result,” wrote Easterman.
Croatian Archbishop Alojzij Stepinac originally welcomed the Ustashi government, but after he learned of the extent of the brutality, and after having received direction from Rome, he condemned its actions. [The British Minister to the Holy See during the war years, Sir Francis D’Arcy Osborne, wrote that Stepinac always acted according to the “well-intended dictates of his conscience.”] A speech he gave on October 24, 1942, is typical of many that he made refuting Nazi theory:
“All men and all races are children of God; all without distinction. Those who are Gypsies, Black, European, or Aryan all have the same rights…. for this reason, the Catholic Church had always condemned, and continues to condemn, all injustice and all violence committed in the name of theories of class, race, or nationality. It is not permissible to persecute Gypsies or Jews because they are thought to be an inferior race.”
The Associated Press reported that “by 1942 Stepinac had become a harsh critic” of that Nazi puppet regime, condemning its “genocidal policies, which killed tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Croats.” He thereby earned the enmity of the Croatian dictator, Ante Pavelic.
Although Cornwell argues that the Holy See granted de facto recognition to the Ustashi government, in actuality the Vatican rebuked Pavelic and refused to recognize the Independent State of Croatia or receive a Croatian representative. [Actes et Documents, vol. IV, no. 400 (“Pavelic is furious… because… he is treated worse by the Holy See than the Slovaks”).] When Pavelic traveled to the Vatican, he was greatly angered because he was permitted only a private audience rather than the diplomatic audience he had wanted. He might not even have been granted that privilege, but for the fact that the extent of the atrocities that had already begun were not yet known.[1]
In his book, Hitler, the War and the Pope, Rychlak further details the history of the misinformation about this horrific history. Cardinal Stepinac has been a target of scorn for those who attack the Church. But claims of his support of the Ustashe’s crimes against the Serb’s comes from Tito’s show trial. Letters were presented allegedly showing Stepinac’s consent to the brutal regime, yet these were proven to be forgeries.[2] Even Stepinac’s prosecutor would later admit the Cardinal was framed because he “refused to sever ties between Croatians and the Roman Catholic Church.”[3]
One of the main sources for the indictment of the Vatican and alleged complicity with Ustashe is Carlo Falconi’s book, The Silence of Pius XII. The Communist Party of Croatia provided Falconi with disinformation from their archives. As Rychlak explains:
The officials eventually decided to give Falconi some of the original documents and to provide him with a copy of a book that they had produced for Stepinac’s trial containing handpicked and altered documents. The documents, like the book, were forged or “selected and edited in order to do as much damage as possible to the image of the Catholic Church.” Falconi was not given access to original materials or archives that could have revealed the truth. Thus, he wrote his book based upon documents “partly forged and all carefully selected to support the government’s accusations against Stepinac and the Church.”
Falconi’s book was extremely successful. It was highly footnoted, and it quoted many documents and shaped much of the early scholarship on Pope Pius XII. It remains much cited to this day. John Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope made extensive use of the materials Falconi had used. In fact, Cornwell cited Falconi by name nine times, and he praised Falconi’s “painstaking” research. Falconi and the works that built upon his book have tainted the entire investigation into Pope Pius XII. As Croatian scholar Jure Krišto has explained: “The documents which both men [Falconi and Cornwell] used had, of course, been assembled by the Yugoslav secret police, then led by the Serbian Communist Aleksandar Rankovic, and fed to Falconi in order to compromise Pope Pius XII as ‘Hitler’s Pope.’” These documents have confounded scholars of Pope Pius XII for decades.[4]
Another false claim is that the Vatican received Nazi gold. Again, this myth is unfounded:
Some critics also charge that the Croatian Catholic Church hid war criminals after the war and helped Nazi gold make its way from Croatia to the Vatican. As for the allegations regarding gold and money taken abroad from the independent Croatian state during 1944-45, author Jere Jareb examined all the relevant documents. He found no evidence that Pavelic or the Ustashe deposited stolen gold at the Vatican, much less that Pius XII approved of such acts.[5]
As for the claim of the Vatican aiding Nazi and Croatian war criminals:
The Vatican has acknowledged that Bishop Alois Hudal of Austria and a Croatian priest named Krunoslav Draganovic helped war criminals escape from Europe. Evidence shows, however, that this was done without approval from Vatican authorities. The Vatican recently permitted Professor Matteo Sanfilippo, a member of the Comision Para el Esclarecimiento de las Actividades Del Nazismo en la Republica Argentina (CEANA), the historical commission that looked into Argentina’s role in sheltering war criminals, to examine Hudal’s personal papers. Sanfilippo found no evidence that the Pope encouraged Hudal’s activities. In fact, Sanfilippo uncovered a letter from Monsignor Montini to Hudal expressing outrage at his suggestion that the Vatican should help members of the S.S. and the Wehrmacht.[6]
So while certain Eastern Orthodox and anti-Catholic writers seek to portray the Vatican as approving of the genocide of Eastern Orthodox Serbs,[7] the reality is the opposite: the Church and Cardinal Stepinac were vehemently against the Ustashe regime.
[1] https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=3098
[2] Ronald Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, Revised and Expanded. Our Sunday Visitor. Kindle Edition, 336.
[3] Ibid, 337.
[4] Ibid, 337-338.
[5] Ibid, 567
[6] Ibid, 347-348
[7] https://web.archive.org/web/20180726041503/https://orthochristian.com/114594.html
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.