I have been a member of JTF for almost 2 years now and I believe that this site is more factual than any other site I have been to. However, some members seem to get easily offended when a Serb is against Roman Catholic Church. I believe that is about time that those members understand the facts behind that. Please note that in general, Serbs are not against majority of Roman Catholics, but rather distrust Roman Catholic Church followers who are neighboring Serbia. Furthermore, Serbs are against Vatican leadership.
To start off, the most important is the fact that during WWII, Croats, who are Roman Catholics, under the leadership of Croatian Catholic priests, murdered close to 1,000,000 Serbs, 50,000 Jews, 60,000 gypsies. Most famous butcher was a Croat friar Miroslav Filipovic Majstorovic, who was also the commander of Jasenovac Concentration Camp, the biggest concentration camp in europe after Auschwitz. What's even worse is that almost immediatelly after horrendous butchering of victims, these same butchers would go to the church and catholic priests would forgive them for their sins.
In addition, Croat Catholic priests were always present when there were forced conversions of Serbs. In one instance, Catholic priests baptised Orthodox Serbs inside a Serbian church. After the baptism, all exits were locked. Church was then burned to the ground with the newly baptized Serbs. You can look up this by doing a search for "Glina massacre"
During the entire war, Ante Pavelic, leader of NHD (Independent State Of Croatia) was getting regular visits from Cardinals in Croatia, who at no point ever tried to excommunicate the Croatian Ustasa Nazi regime for their horrendous crimes. Furthermore, Pavelic visited the Pope in Vatican many times and even the Pope was not willing to excommunicate or at least condemn him or his leadership. Alojzije Stepinac, the main cardinal in Croatia during WWII, was very often photographed visiting Pavelic's office. In 1990's, Stepinac was beatified by the Vatican.
At the end of the war, Pavelic and those close to him were able to escape justice by going through so-called Ratlines, which primarily went through Vatican. Vatican leadership was willing to help them to escape justice by accepting money and valuables stolen from victims of the genocide and in exchange gave Pavelic and his men fake passports and new identities.
In 1992, Vatican was one of the first countries to recognize Croatia as an independent country. To add to an insult, Vatican even supported the idea that the Jasenovac Memorial Grounds be the final burial ground for croatian ustasa soldiers. It meant that the butchers and their victims were to be buried together. This idea is still in the air because the final decision is yet to be made.
Again, this does not mean that all Catholics were behaving in such brutal ways and supported the leadership. There were Croats who weren't part of this plan and who helped save non-croats survive that genocide. Unfortunatelly,number of these Croats was quite small.
Another fact that some serbs don't know is that during WWII, thanx to the Italians, over 250,000 serbs were saved. When Italian Fascists saw the genocide happening and the methods of that genocide, they even helped Serbian resistance fighters (not the communist partisans, but chetniks) by supplying them with arms in Dalmatia to ressist the Croatian Nazis butchering. Italians have always had good relations with the Serbs for centuries and even continue today.
Some might say that Roman Catholic Church and Vatican don't have that much influence in Croatia today or in the past, but that is very innaccurate. The influence is very strong.
I have many friends who are of Roman Catholic faith, some are even Croats. We all know who we are, but we do not let the Catholic/Orthodox differences to get between. So see, it is not the entire Roman Catholic Church, but rather Roman Catholics in the surrounding countries such as Croatia and Hungary. If anything, it should be defined more as a distrust of Roman Catholic church rather than the hate of Roman Catholic Church.
In 2013, Pope is supposed to visit Serbia for some anniversary, first visit of any pope to Serbia ever. However, there is a strong opposition voice among Orthodox Serbs and I believe that it is a very bad idea for the pope to visit serbia.
The only way for the trust of Roman Catholics and Vatican to normalize would be:
1. Apology by the Pope for WWII genocide and admiting it's guilt of not doing anything to stop it and even supporting it in certain instances.
2. Condemning the croatian catholics and priests for their involvement in the genocide.
3. Returning of the stolen gold and money from WWII concentration camp victims, which was used to finance the escape of Croatian Nazis from justice through ratlines.
I hope this is informative enough to fellow JTF members, especially of the Roman Catholic following. It is always important to be informed about any subject because when people are misinformed or uneducated, they can easily be manipulated and conclusions are made without facts.
Topic: roman catholic church and serbs.....what's the deal? FAQ (Read 2363 times)