Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše

[3] The new Regent Prince, Paul Karadjordjević, was convinced by the success of Vladko Maček's more moderate Croatian Peasant's Party at 1938 elections to grant further autonomy to Croatia.

[4] Initially there was enthusiasm for Croatian independence, but the state was in fact under occupation by the German and Italian armies, while the Ustaša commenced a ruthless persecution of Serbs, Jews, Roma and dissident Croats and Bosnian Muslims.

From around 217,00 to 500,000 people (although the exact number is impossible to ascertain and is disputed by different sides) were killed by the Ustaša, both in massacres and at concentration camps, most infamously the one at Jasenovac.

"[7] Phayer wrote that just after becoming dictator of Croatia and "after receiving a papal blessing in 1941, Ante Pavelić and his Ustaša lieutenants unleashed an unspeakable genocide in their new country.

The first Croatian concentration camp was opened at the end of April 1941, and in June a law was passed to establish a network across the country, in order to exterminate ethnic and religious minorities.

[25] Phayer argues that "establishing the fact of genocide in Croatia prior to the Holocaust carries great historical weight for our study because Catholics were the perpetrators and not, as in Poland, the victims.

[28] Pavelić told Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop that while the lower clergy supported the Ustaše, the bishops, and particularly Archbishop Stepinac, were opposed to the movement because of "Vatican international policy".

[24] Hebblethwaite wrote that to oppose the violence of the new Ustaše state, the "Vatican's policy was to strengthen the hand of [Archbishop Stepinac] in his rejection of forcible conversions and brutalities.

[24] Gregorij Rožman, the bishop of Ljubljana in Slovenia, allowed some Jews who had converted to Catholicism and fled from Croatia into his diocese to remain there, with assistance from the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi in obtaining the permission of the Italian civil authorities.

[32] In Italian-occupied Croatia, Nazi envoy Siegfried Kasche advised Berlin that Italian forces were not willing to hand over Jews and had "apparently been influenced" by Vatican opposition to German anti-Semitism.

According to Phayer, Stepinac, who arranged the meeting between Pius XII and Pavelić, was satisfied with this step, viewing it as de facto recognition and Marcone as a nuncio in all but name.

In the early stage, the Croatian massacres were explained as "teething troubles of a new regime" in Rome by Msgr Domenico Tardini of the Vatican state secretariat.— Excerpt from Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.

[43]Rychlak writes that the "Associated Press reported that "by 1942 Stepinac had become a harsh critic" of the Nazi puppet regime, condemning its "genocidal policies, which killed tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and Croats."

When Himmler visited Zagreb a year later, indicating the impending roundup of remaining Jews, Stepinac wrote Pavelić that if this occurred, he would protest for "the Catholic Church is not afraid of any secular power, whatever it may be, when it has to protect basic human values".

[13] Cornwell considers Catholic involvement important because of "the Vatican's knowledge of the atrocities, Pacelli's failure to use his good offices to intervene, and the complicity it represented in the Final Solution being planned in northern Europe.

"[1] According to Eugene Tisserant, future Dean of the College of Cardinals, "we have the list of all clergymen who participated in these atrocities and we shall punish them at the right time to cleanse our conscience of the stain with which they spotted us.

"[27] Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione instructed nuncio Marcone that "if your eminence can find a suitable occasion, he should recommend in a discreet manner, that would not be interpreted as an official appeal, that moderation be employed with regard to Jews on Croatian territory.

Rychlak quotes a letter from Pius himself, dated 7 April 1943: "The Holy See has always entertained the firm hope that the Slovak government, interpreting also the sentiments of its own people, Catholics almost entirely, would never proceed with the forcible removal of persons belonging to the Jewish race.

This pain is aggravated further now that it appears from various reports that the Slovak government intends to proceed with the total removal of the Jewish residents of Slovakia, not even sparing women and children.

Shortly thereafter, the secretary of the Jewish Agency for Palestine met with Archbishop Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) "to thank the Holy See for the happy outcome of the steps taken on behalf of the Israelites in Slovakia ... [I]n October 1942, 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".

[50] According to Waugh (who visited Croatia after the war), "the task of the partisans was made easier in that the clergy as a whole had undoubtedly compromised the church by tolerating the pro-Axis Ustashis, if not actively collaborating with them."

In Rome, the pro-Nazi Austrian bishop Alois Hudal was linked to the chain, and the Croatian College offered refuge to many fleeing Croatia, guided by Msgr Krunoslav Draganović.

[7] According to Phayer, "at the end of the war, the leaders of the Ustasha movement, including its clerical supporters such as Bishop Šarić, fled the country, taking gold looted from massacred Jews and Serbs with them to Rome.

[55] By Hebblethwaite's account, Pavelić was hidden in a Salzburg convent until 1948, then brought to Rome by Draganović, who "was a law unto himself and ran his own show and lodged him in the Collegio Pio Latino Americano disguised as 'Father Gomez'" until Perón invited him to Argentina.

[60] During this period, across Central and Eastern Europe, a number of prominent Catholics were being punished in reprisals, or silenced as potential sources of dissent by the new Communist governments being formed.

"[7][61] According to Eugene Tisserant, future Dean of the College of Cardinals, "we have the list of all clergymen who participated in these atrocities and we shall punish them at the right time to cleanse our conscience of the stain with which they spotted us."

"[7] Time magazine reported in October 1946 that:In a Zagreb sports auditorium, brilliantly lit for photographers and 500 spectators, the show trial of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac and twelve Catholic priests was rolling to a close.

[68] Former OSS agent William Gowen gave a deposition as an expert witness that in 1946 Colonel Ivan Babić transported ten truckloads of gold from Switzerland to the Pontifical College.

[71] Each year in December, the Catholic church in Croatia holds the annual memorial mass[72] dedicated to Ustasha fascist dictator Ante Pavelić in Zagreb and Split.

[78] In 2017, Bishop of Sisak Vlado Košić was one of the signatories of a petition for the introduction of the fascist Ustasha movement salute Za dom spremni to the official use in the Croatian Armed Forces.