In his new encyclical letter Fratelli tutti, speaking of “forgiving but not forgetting” and of commemorating the unjust suffering on both sides of the conflict, the Holy Father cited the Letter of the Croatians Bishops’ Conference from 1 May 1995. The bishops’, at what would be the end of the war in Croatia, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII, issued a pastoral letter to the consecrated and the faithful summing up their position in the turbulent times.
What began with the heroic witness of Archbishop Stepinac and the other Croatian bishops and consecrated during the Second World War and the communist regime ended in the heroic witness of the Croatian bishops and consecrated during the war in Croatia. The Catholic bishops of the then Yugoslavia first issued a pastoral letter in 1945 “they noted the murder and arrest of the clergy, claiming that 243 priests had been killed, 169 were in prison, and eighty-nine were listed as missing, while an addition nineteen seminary students, three monks, and four nuns were also known to have been murdered. They highlighted the case of twenty-eight murdered Franciscans in the Široki Brijeg monastery” (Miroslav Akmadža, The position of the Catholic Church in Croatia 1945 – 1970). With the letter, they stated, they “do not look for this conflict, nor did we in the past. Our thoughts were always directed towards peace and the organization of social and public life”.
Similar was said by the same Croatian bishops’ in the 50 years later: “In our minds we visit the known and unknown mass graves, scattered throughout the homeland, and in the spirit of the Christian faith we pray for the eternal peace to all of victims. With that, we at the same time calm the souls of the living: relatives, friends, compatriots of all the dead”.
As the Pope showed in citing the letter, the words of the Croatian bishops’ are still very relevant. Therefore, I bring you my translation of the full text of the letter:
The Letter of the Croatian Catholic Bishops’ Conference on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the End of the World War II
The month of May this year marks half a century since the end of World War II. Among the peoples of Europe and the world commemorating this anniversary are the Croatian people that are reviving the historical memory of the meaning the month of May 1945 had for them.
The Croatian Bishops’ Conference has decided to join this historical memorial. However, the Church will mark that memorial in its unique way: with a memorial act of Jesus’ passion, death, resurrection and glorious ascension – with an appropriate mass celebration. Saturday, 13 May 1995, mass will be celebrated in all of our cathedrals by the local bishops with their priests and the faithful – offering up, unified with the Christ’s sacrifice, with all of the joys and hopes, sadness and anxieties of that month of May 1945.
Memory of the sufferings of the war
The end of armed conflicts, bombarding, demolition and death, on the fronts and in the background, was experienced by the peoples of Europe as a great relief, as the establishment of peace and freedom. The Croatian people expected the same. All the more so as Croats fought in large numbers for the Allies. But the month of May 1945 is especially remembered in Croatia as a month of terrible slaughter of imprisoned soldiers and civilians extradited to the Yugoslavian army by the Western Allies. The memory of that suffering is particularly connected to Bleiburg and the “Way of the Cross”. More so, that May – unlike other nations in which freedom and democracy have been restored – meant for us a new beginning of persecution, imprisonment, the killing of innocent people with the arrival of the Marxist totalitarian system. Many were perished only because they were Catholics, because they were Catholic priests, monks and nuns, because they were Catholic bishops. That martyrology is the accusation of the executioner, but it is even more – the glory of the Church of Christ.
The post-war casualties are, however, only a continuation of the suffering that marked these areas, especially in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, from April 1941 to May 1945, when World War II raged here. The Croatan people, in the pursuit of freedom, found themselves under attack of the forces that denied them that and that viciously destroyed them implementing the Greater Serbia political program. The suffering of the Croatian population, the destruction of entire settlements, the torture and killing of civil, unarmed people marked those war years with crimes and cruelty of large proportions.
On the other hand, the actions of the regime in Croatia, based on the ideology of racial and national exclusivity, carried out a revenge and caused victims that cannot be justified by defence, but must be called crimes. In that way, armed conflicts and crimes left a large number of victims and terrible destruction. The number of dead and killed on all sides engulfed in war rises to hundreds of thousands, according to sober and objective examiners of our tragic period, although they admit that their study is not yet complete.
It is only now, in freedom, after the monopoly over historical truth has ended, that we have the opportunity to pay our respects to all the victims. For the past fifty years or so, public honour has been paid only to the victims of one side. Other victims were not allowed to be mentioned; it was dangerous to even know they existed. Therefore, today we are publicly praying for our compatriots, members of the Croatian people, sons and daughters of the Catholic Church.
In our minds we visit the known and unknown mass graves, scattered throughout the homeland, and in the spirit of the Christian faith we pray for the eternal peace to all of victims. With that, we at the same time calm the souls of the living: relatives, friends, compatriots of all the dead. By God’s mercy we heal souls wounded by the cruelty and injustice inflicted on them so that hatred and the thought of revenge do not spring from their hearts. The belief that the dead are in God’s peace reconciles peoples among themselves.
The opposite attitudes towards the victims of the war, which was systematically and officially carried out in our country for fifty years, and according to which the victims are only on one side and the executioners only on the other side, inflamed vengeful thoughts and intentions, of which so tragically the current victims of the war imposed on Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina testify. Thus, our war chapter did not end fifty years ago, as with other nations. The ghosts did not disarm.
In the historical hour, when after communism the expressed will of the people had to be respected, the force of arms was resorted to maintain dominance. The bloodshed has erupted again, for the aftermath to follow us for many years to come, if injustices are not corrected and if the meaning of life and death, guilt and justification is not sought on the way of the Christ: in his person, in his work, in his word.
Therefore, at this anniversary, humbly before God and sincerely before the people, we will pay Christian tribute to all the victims, primarily the victims of the Second World War, but also the victims of today, as well as those who preceded the Second World War in our areas and filled with blood and tears almost our entire twentieth century. We will pray for eternal peace for all the victims.
The right to life and dignity of every person is under God’s protection. Therefore, we owe equal respect to every innocent victim. There can be no racial, national, denominational or partisan differences there. The fundamental equality in the dignity of all people derives from the very nature of man, created in the image and likeness of God. Individual and especially mass executions without any court and proof of guilt are always and everywhere grave crimes before God and before people.
Therefore, we will remember the victims of the Croatian people and the Catholic Church at the holy altar. We will remember the victims of Serbian nationality and the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia. We will remember the victims of Jews, Roma and all those killed in our country during the Second World War, killed because they are of other nations, other denominations or other political beliefs.
However, the memory of the victims is necessarily associated with the memory of the executioners, the memory of the culprits for so many victims. The culprits have their name and their surname, so their responsibility is primarily personal. The excuse that they were merely carrying out orders cannot absolve them of the personal guilt as the direct perpetrators of the crimes. But even greater is the guilt of the commanders, ideologues, creators of the system who plan in advance a bloodshed of those who don’t think like them. The blame is not ruled out by the fact that there are crimes committed in every war. Legal defence and crime cannot be equated.
The culprits in our area were members of a certain people, foreign (in the Second World War, especially German and Italian) and domestic – especially Serbian and Croatian – whose name they tarnished with their deeds. Many of them are also members of certain Churches or religious communities. However, in order for a lawful court to be just, it is necessary to seek and respect the truth for both victims and executioners. Increasing the number of victims in order to impose a stronger stamp of guilt on an entire nation or group, strikes the innocent with an injustice that no honest conscience can approve of.
Repentance and reconciliation
It is not the main difficulty of the question how to mourn the victims of one’s own community and how to recognize the guilt of another community. Croats and Serbs, Catholics and Orthodox, Muslims and others are faced with a more difficult moral question: How to mourn the victims of another community, how to admit guilt in one’s own community? And then: How to atone for guilt, how to obtain the forgiveness of God and the man, the peace of conscience and the reconciliation between peoples and nations? How to start a new age based on righteousness and the truth?
The key of the answer we find in the prayer of our Lord. All people, especially those who, with us, address God as Father, we call brothers. We pray together with them: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In longing for God’s forgiveness, we humans mutually forgive each other. That which we store in our historical memory are not unsettled bills that give birth to thoughts of revenge. We remember the evil that happened but should not have happened.
We learn how not to repeat sin and how to persevere in a good decision. However, to the content of our historical memory belong also the everything that the people of the Church did when they condemned the crime and wholeheartedly protected and helped the endangered at a time when the Second World War raged. This Christian determination and sacrifice, especially by the Catholic bishops in Croatia, are an inspiration and encouragement for today’s generation. The Holy Father John Paul II encourages us in this path of achieving good and striving for forgiveness and reconciliation. He told us in Zagreb: “Seeking forgiveness and forgiving oneself could thus be a concise task that lies before us all, if we want to set firm preconditions for achieving true and everlasting peace“ (The Homily at Mass in Zagreb, 11 September 1994).
The commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II introduces us to the preparation for the Great Jubilee: 2,000 years since the birth of Jesus Christ. In his apostolic letter on the preparation for this Jubilee, the Holy Father reminds us that the joy of the Jubilee is in a special way the joy of the absolutions of sins, the joy of conversion. “It is therefore just” – continued the Holy Father – “that the Church is becoming aware of the sins of its sons … The Church, because it is holy according to its incorporation in Christ, does not tire of doing penance: she always acknowledges as her own, before God and before men, the sinful sons” (on to the said place, number 33). Consistent with that, the Church of God in Croatia does penance and calls to penance for its sons who did not witness for Christ, but scandalized all by their way of thinking and acting.
This is how we behave towards the perpetrators of the crimes against the victims we mention, which came from Catholic background. In this spirit we repeat the words of the servant of God, Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, written on 19 February 1943, when he called Jasenovac camp a “shameful stain” and who declared the murderers “Croatia’s greatest disaster”. That judgment of the shepherds of the Church has not lost its force during these fifty or more years since it was said.
We wish to meet with other Christians who will treat the executioners from their environment in the same way. We especially wish the Catholics and Orthodox in Croatia take the same Christian attitude towards both the victims and the guilty, towards sin and towards reconciliation. If historical facts have been manipulated in the past, let us hasten the hour when, in freedom and responsibility before God and before people, we will publicly manifest the same Christian attitude towards both victims and guilty. We pray that that time shines upon us soon!
The Church mourns the victims; the Church mourns the executioners. She fights against sin and performs the ministry of reconciliation with God and among men. In faith and humility, she heals the wounds of the soul and the body and thus opens a more humane future for individuals and nations. The Church believes in the resurrection of the body and the eternal life and leaves the final judgment of sufferings and guilt to God who is the Truth itself, the perfect justice and infinite love. We encourage our priests and the faithful that in their prayer and holy mass they offer up to God all the victims of the past and present war and to invoke God’s peace during our times.
May the Lord accept our prayer and penance!
Franjo Cardinal Kuharić, Archbishop of Zagreb, President,
Srećko Badurina, Bishop of Šibenik, Vice President,
Anton Tamarut, Archbishop of Rijeka-Senj,
Ante Jurić, Archbishop of split-Makarska,
Marijan Oblak, Archbishop of Zadar,
Ćiril Kos, Bishop of Đakovo-Srijem,
Slavomir Miklovš, Bishop of Križevci (Greek-Catholic),
Antun Bogetić, Bishop of Poreč and Pula,
Slobodan Štambuk, Bishop of Hvar,
Josip Bozanić, Bishop of Krk,
Želimir Puljić, Bishop of Dubrovnik,
Ivan Prenđa, Auxiliary Archbishop of Zadar,
Đuro Kokša, Auxiliary Bishop of Zagreb,
Marin Srakić, Auxiliary Bishop of Đakovo-Srijem,
Juraj Jezerinac, Auxiliary Bishop of Zagreb,
Marko Culej, Auxiliary Bishop of Zagreb,
Marin Barišić, Auxialiry Bishop of Split-Makarska
In Zagreb, 1 May 1995
Exsultet 