In Croatia’s calvary

“Today we celebrate the memory of Blessed Cardinal Stepinac, bishop and martyr, who sacrificed his life fifty years ago in witness of his faith. Do cherish the memory of your martyrs, and may their heroic example for the Church make you ‘the salt of the earth and the light of the World'”. Addressing Croatian pilgrims at the end of the general audience of February 10 Benedict XVI recalled the figure of blessed Alojzije Stepinac. “Isn’t it wonderful and surprising, that despite the attempts to destroy his memory and good deeds, his person and truth continues being a source of light?”. With these words the archbishop of Zagreb Cardinal Jospi Bozanic recalled the figure of blessed Alojzije Stepinac, Croatian cardinal and archbishop of Zagreb, upon the 50th anniversary of his death. Blessed Stepinac was a heroic martyr of faith in the darkest hours of Communist persecution in Eastern Europe. “Alojzije left us his witness of the wisdom of the Cross – said Cardinal Bozanic during a celebration officiated in Zagreb’s cathedral on February 10 – All the ideologies of his times wanted to dominate the truth, but they were forced to admit their defeat. After being crucified and humiliated Stepinac grew stronger than before. He chose the faithfulness to God and to the Church”. “There are values that cannot be denied since the truth cannot be denied. If it happens, life is without meaning, without joy”, His Eminence said. “He accepted suffering like a faithful shepherd. His courage and his generosity delivered a new covenant, which produced new priestly and religious vocations. Around his tomb, many who were overcome by doubt recovered the strength to continue, parents worried for their children, spouses with difficulties, young people. Alojzije is our heritage”. For Cardinal Bozanic, the memory of blessed Stepinac is “a call to sainthood” addressed to the Croatian Church as a whole: the priests, the lay faithful, the youth, religious men and women, families, intellectuals and politicians. “After 50 years – he concluded – his memory testifies to the urgent need of proclaiming the Gospel, indicating the path to follow in life”. BiographyOn February 10, 1960 Croatian Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb, passed away in Krasic, his hometown, where he had been confined. After years of physical and moral suffering, the human event of a heroic martyr of faith, a thorny witness, like many other brothers in the priesthood and in the episcopate in the darkest period of Communist persecution in Eastern Europe, came to an end. A special permission for the solemn celebration of his funeral in Zagreb’s cathedral was requested to Titus.On October 11 1946, the Court found Stepinac “guilty” of high treason and collaboration with the Germans. He was sentenced to sixteen years in prison. In reality, the true reason of the farce-trial, like many others staged by Communist regimes in that period, was the archbishop’s firm refusal to erect in Yugoslavia a Church independent from the Church of Rome, as acknowledged by the Parliament of independent Croatia in February 1992, which rehabilitated the figure of archbishop Stepinac once and for all. Stepinac was placed under arrest for the first time on May 17 1945 and sentenced to 17 days in prison. It was but an “anticipation” of the calvary he was to suffer one year later. He was first brought to the prison of Lepoglava, where he remained for five years, during which Tito’s regime turned a deaf ear to the many appeals – notably that of Pius XII – calling for his release. The ‘Stepinac case’ soon became an international affair (even Churchill intervened from England), which risked seriously impacting Titus, whose isolation was increasing after his rupture with Moscow. Finally, world pressure led the dictator to grant him home confinement. Stepinac was brought to Krasic, his hometown, and was kept under constant police surveillance. But the regime got the hardest blow when Pius XII, in the Concistory of January 12, 1953 raised Stepinac to cardinalship. Titus took it as a personal offence and “broke” the ties with the Vatican. Msgr. Silvio Oddi, the then only Holy See representative as chargé d’affaires at Belgrade’s Apostolic Nunciature, was expelled. He was to be the last Vatican diplomat who left the ‘Iron Curtain’. The cardinal insignia was delivered to Stepinac’s home. He did not wish to go to Rome, since he risked being denied a return visa, nor did he ever accept the option of being liberated provided he left Yugoslavia for good. He bravely continued living in confinement, under close surveillance, and was prevented from recovering his post in Zagreb. He died from the affliction caused by the many diseases he contracted during his imprisonment and perhaps – a realistic possibility – his gaolers, who refused to reveal the results of the autopsy, slowly poisoned him. The story of his calvary is registered in the Pontifical Yearbooks of that period where the brief biographic notes, for 14 years running, inevitably terminate with “imprisoned”, “confined” and “precluded”.Born on May 8 in Krasic, ordained in 1930, elected to the titular Church of Nicopsi in 1934, Stepinac was consecrated bishop on June 24. On December 7 1937 the archbishop of Zagreb died and he succeeded him at the prestigious metropolitan See of Zagreb, one of the youngest bishops elected to this post. On October 3 1998, at the sanctuary of Marija Bistrica, during his pastoral visit to independent Croatia, John Paul II proclaimed him Blessed. In the same sanctuary, for many years prior to his arrest, Stepinac had led the faithful on their Croatian pilgrimages.