Made a cardinal in 1953, Stepinac served as Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death, a period which included the fascist rule of the genocidal Ustaše regime with the support of the Axis powers from 1941 to 1945 during World War II.

[1] In a verdict that polarized public opinion both in Yugoslavia and beyond,[1][5] the Yugoslav authorities found him guilty on the charge of high treason (for collaboration with the Ustaše regime), as well as complicity in the forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism.

[17] Pope Francis invited Serbian prelates to participate in canonization investigations, but in 2017 a joint commission was only able to agree that"[i]n the case of Cardinal Stepinac, the interpretations that were predominantly given by Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs remain divergent".

[38] Less than a month after the assassination, Stepinac was among those who signed what became known as the "Zagreb Memorandum",[39] which listed a number of demands, including the exoneration of Maček, a general amnesty, freedom of movement and association, restrictions on the activities of government-authorised paramilitaries, and free elections.

[55][56] He later claimed that Catholics were forced to convert to Orthodoxy during the period between the wars, but according to the historian Jozo Tomasevich, the principal reason for their conversions was the pro-Serb public policy in the Serb-dominated Yugoslav state meant that it was advantageous both politically and for career prospects to be a member of the dominant religion.

[52]West describes Stepinac as a "puritanical zealot",[74] who gathered together those opposing communism, liberalism, secular education, divorce reform, profanity, sexual intercourse outside of marriage, and birth control, under the umbrella of the Croatian Catholic movement.

I replied to [Pavelić] that such a solution would be better for the unfortunate Slovenes"[97]Croatian historian, Hrvoje Klasić, notes Stepinac supported actions that today's courts would classify as ethnic cleansing of Serbs.

[121] In December 1941, Pavelić met with the Italian foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, and told him that the lower levels of Catholic clergy displayed a very positive attitude towards the Ustaše regime, but that some of the bishops were openly hostile to the government.

[113] This is demonstrated by the pastoral letter issued after the episcopal conference of 24 March 1945, in which the Croatian Catholic Church maintained its formal support for the puppet state and its rulers, despite the fact that most senior regime figures were preparing to flee the country.

[139] Richard West writes that, on 15 April, as Pavelić and other Ustaše leaders were getting ready to flee, "Archbishop Stepinac devoted his sermon to what he believed was Croatia's worst sin, not mass murder, but swearing.

"[139] The atrocities committed by the Ustaše can be categorised into four broad areas, all of which fell largely on the Serb population of the NDH; racial laws, mass killings and concentration camps, deportations, and forced conversions to Catholicism.

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.In response to criticisms by the Yugoslav government in exile, that the Church had not done enough to counter Ustaše crimes, in May 1943 Stepinac wrote a letter to the Papal secretary in which he acknowledged the crimes, yet praised the Ustaše, among other reasons, for fighting abortion and pornography, with Stepinac blaming Jews and Serbs for both.

[124] In his homily of 31 October 1943, which some claim is his most resolute critique of the Ustaše,[147] Stepinac first inveighed against abortion, the "pagan fashions of today's female world" and "all the licentiousness ... that has been observed ... at sea beaches and other bathing spots".

He proclaims it was not the Church that "created in the souls of people the dissatisfaction and insatiability which has produced such sad consequences", instead he blames "certain circles, organizations, and members of other national groups", which some sources state is a reference to Serbs and perhaps Jews.

[117] Allegedly the Ustaša government at this point agitated at the Holy See for him to be removed from the position of archbishop of Zagreb, this however was refused due to the fact that the Vatican did not recognize the Ustaše state (despite Italian pressure).

[150] 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.

But I consider it my bishop's responsibility to raise my voice and to say that this is not permitted according to Catholic teaching, which is why I ask that you undertake the most urgent measures on the entire territory of the Independent State of Croatia, so that not a single Serb is killed unless it is shown that he committed a crime warranting death.

[162] Pope Pius XII had dispatched Marcone as Apostolic Visitor to Croatia, reportedly in order to assist Stepinac and the Croatian Episcopate in "combating the evil influence of neo-pagan propaganda which could be exercised in the organization of the new state".

[166] Due to the arbitrary nature of justice in the NDH and the absence of proper systems for complaint and redress, people such as Stepinac developed an approach of intervening personally with senior government figures on behalf of victims.

He made repeated private interventions in individual cases, he refused to allow converted Jews to wear the yellow star in church, and he forbad military chaplains to administer the ustaSa oath if a crossed dagger and revolver were lying in front of the crucifix.

In February 1945 the Zagreb Archdiocese newspaper reported that Stepinac and other Church dignitaries attended a congratulatory New Year's reception at Pavelić's, which included members of the Allied German Armed Forces, led by Generalfeldmarschall Maximilian von Weichs.

"[196] Stella Alexander suggests that Yugoslav authorities wished to balance the arrest and execution of Serb leader Draža Mihailović by moving against a prominent Croat; and in the words of the Public Prosecutor, "to unmask before the world a concerted conspiracy by the western imperial powers against the new Yugoslavia".

[138] Professor Bogdan Kolar of the University of Ljubljana notes that the chief trial prosecutor, Jakov Blažević, admitted in a 1985 interview with the Slovenian magazine Polet that "Stepinac's only crime was not partaking in the separation of the Church in Croatia from the Vatican.

[173] At the same time Tomasevich notes that Stepinac's failure to publicly condemn the Ustaše's genocidal measures against Serbs and the Orthodox Church, "cannot be defended from the standpoint of humanity, justice and common decency".

[174] On the other hand, John Fine states that the trial "was well publicized both at home and abroad by extremely biased figures on both sides, was carried out with the proper legal procedures; there was no torture and a great deal of evidence was brought before the judges, a considerable amount of which was devastating and accurate, and clearly demonstrated the archbishop's collaboration with the Ustaše regime.

[204] The National Conference of Christians and Jews at the Bronx Round Table [citation needed] adopted a unanimous resolution on 13 October condemning the trial: This great churchman has been charged with being a collaborator with the Nazis.

[204]In Britain, on 23 October 1946, 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.

[204]On 22 July 2016, Zagreb County Court annulled the verdict in the review process, as requested by the Archbishop's nephew Boris Stepinac, "due to gross violations of current and former fundamental principles of substantive and procedural criminal law".

[219] The head of the Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff, also stated that annulment in Croatia was part of a much wider phenomenon, which he has also observed in Ukraine, Lithuania and Hungary – "the tendency to honor people who fought communism, without checking what they did in WWII."

"[207] At a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia on 5 October 1951, Ivan Krajačić said, "In America they are printing Crvena ruža na oltaru [Red Roses on the Altar] of 350 pages, in which is described the entire Stepinac process.