Aloysius Viktor Stepinac (Croatian Alojzije Viktor Stepinac, 8 May 1898 10 February 1960) was a cardinal of the Catholic Church, as well as Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death in 1960, including the fascist rule of the Ustae over the Axis puppet state the Independent State of Croatia
Aloysius Stepinac - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia AlchetronSign in Sneha Girap (Editor)I Love to read n write about Things that I find Interesting Aloysius StepinacUpdated on Dec 31, 2023EditLikeCommentShareShare on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on RedditSign inChurch Roman Catholic ChurchAppointed 7 December 1937Successor Franjo SeperSee ZagrebRole CardinalDiocese ZagrebName Aloysius StepinacArchdiocese ZagrebInstalled 1938Died February 10, 1960, Krasic, CroatiaPlace of burial Zagreb Cathedral, Zagreb, CroatiaParents Barbara Stepinac, Josip StepinacEducation Pontifical Gregorian University, University of ZagrebSimilar People Ante Pavelic, Franjo Seper, Antun Bauer, Petar Zrinski, Fran Krsto FrankopanHis eminence aloysius stepinac cardinal archbishop of zagreb glass tomb Aloysius Viktor Stepinac (Croatian: Alojzije Viktor Stepinac, 8 May 1898 – 10 February 1960) was a cardinal of the Catholic Church, as well as Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death in 1960, including the fascist rule of the Ustaše over the Axis puppet state the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from 1941 to 1945 during World War II. He was tried by the communist Yugoslav government after the war and convicted of treason and collaboration with the Ustaše regime. He served his 16-year sentence first in prison, then confined to his home village of Krašić. He was made a cardinal in 1953. In 1998 he was declared a martyr and beatified by Pope John Paul II. His record during World War II, conviction, and his subsequent martyrdom and beatification remain controversial. On 22 July 2016, the Zagreb County Court annulled his post-war conviction due to "gross violations of current and former fundamental principles of substantive and procedural criminal law".ContentsHis eminence aloysius stepinac cardinal archbishop of zagreb glass tombZagreb cathedral croatia gothic style architecture cardinal aloysius stepinac tombEarly lifeAppointmentPolitical situationOther activitiesArchbishop of ZagrebPolitical and religious viewsWorld War IIInvasion and establishment of the Independent State of CroatiaRelations with the governmentResponse to Ustae atrocitiesRacial lawsMass killings and concentration campsDeportationsForced conversionsPost war periodTrialReactionsAnnulment of the verdictImprisonmentCardinalateDeath and martyrdom controversiesLegacyNominations to Righteous Among the NationsReferencesAfter serving as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army on the Italian Front during World War I, Stepinac was ordained in 1930, and in 1931 became liturgical master of ceremonies to the Archbishop of Zagreb. He established the archdiocesan branch of the charity Caritas later that year, and was appointed coadjutor bishop to the see of Zagreb in 1934. When Archbishop Antun Bauer died on 7 December 1937, Stepinac succeeded him as the Archbishop of Zagreb.During World War II, on 6 April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany, who established the Ustaše-led NDH. As archbishop of the puppet state's capital, Stepinac had close associations with the Ustaše leaders during the Nazi occupation, issued proclamations celebrating the NDH, and welcomed the Ustaše leaders. Despite initially welcoming the Independent State of Croatia, Stepinac subsequently condemned the Nazi-aligned state's atrocities against Jews and Serbs. He objected to the persecution of Jews and Nazi laws, helped Jews and others to escape and criticized Ustaše atrocities in front of Zagreb Cathedral in 1943. Despite this, Stepinac never broke with the Ustaše regime and continued to attend public gatherings at their side.After the war he publicly condemned the new Yugoslav government and its actions during World War II, especially for murders of priests by Communist militants. Yugoslav authorities indicted the archbishop on multiple counts of war crimes and collaboration with the enemy during wartime. The trial was depicted in the West as a typical communist "show trial", biased against the archbishop; however, some claim the trial was "carried out with proper legal procedure".In a verdict that polarized public opinion both in Yugoslavia and beyond, the Yugoslav authorities found him guilty on the charge of high treason (for collaboration with the fascist Ustaše regime), as well as complicity in the forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, but served only five at Lepoglava before being transferred to house arrest with his movements confined to his home parish of Krašić.In 1952 he was appointed cardinal by Pope Pius XII. He was unable to participate in the 1958 conclave due to the house arrest to which he had been sentenced. Stepinac died of polycythemia in 1960 while still under confinement in his parish. On 3 October 1998, Pope John Paul II declared him a martyr and beatified him before 500,000 Croatians in Marija Bistrica near Zagreb.Stella Alexander, author of The Triple Myth, a sympathetic biography of Stepinac, writes about him that "Two things stand out. He feared Communism above all (especially above fascism); and he found it hard to grasp that anything beyond the boundaries of Croatia, always excepting the Holy See, was quite real. ... He lived in the midst of apocalyptic events, bearing responsibilities which he had not sought. ... In the end one is left feeling that he was not quite great enough for his role. Given his limitations he behaved very well, certainly much better than most of his own people, and he grew in spiritual stature during the course of his long ordeal."Zagreb cathedral croatia gothic style architecture cardinal aloysius stepinac tomb Early lifeAlojzije Viktor Stepinac was born in Brezarić, a village in the parish of Krašić in the Austro-Hungarian Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia on 8 May 1898, to a wealthy viticulturalist Josip Stepinac and his second wife Barbara (née Penić). He was the fifth of nine children, and he had three more siblings from his father's first marriage.His mother, a devout Roman Catholic, prayed constantly that he would enter the priesthood. The family moved to Krašić in 1906, and Stepinac attended primary school there, then attended high school in Zagreb from 1909-15, boarding at the Archdiocese of Zagreb orphanage. This was followed by study at the lycée of the archdiocese, as he was seriously considering taking holy orders, having sent in his application to the seminary at the age of 16.He was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army for service in World War I, and had to accelerate his studies and graduate ahead of schedule. Sent to a reserve officers school in Rijeka, after six months training he was sent to serve on the Italian Front in 1917 where he commanded Bosnian soldiers. In July 1918, he was captured by Italian forces who held him as a prisoner of war. His family was initially told that he had been killed, and a memorial service held in Krašić. A week after the service, his parents received a telegram from their son telling them he had been captured. He was held in various Italian prisoner-of-war camps until 6 December 1918.After the formation of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on 1 December 1918, he was no longer treated as an enemy soldier, and he volunteered for the Yugoslav Legion that had been engaged on the Salonika Front. As the war had already ended, he was demobilized with the rank of second lieutenant and returned home in the spring of 1919.After the war he enrolled at the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Zagreb, but left it after only one semester and returned home to help his father in his vineyards. His father wanted him to marry, and in 1923 he was briefly engaged to a teacher, Marija Horvat, but the engagement was broken off. In 1922, Stepinac was part of the politically-conservative Catholic Hrvatski orlovi (Croatian Eagles) youth sport organisation, and traveled to the mass games in Brno, Czechoslovakia. He was at the front of the group's ceremonial procession, carrying the Croatian flag.On 28 October 1924, at the age of 26, Stepinac entered the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum in Rome to study for the priesthood. During his studies there he befriended the future Austrian cardinal Franz König when the two played together on a volleyball team. Granted an American scholarship, he went on to study for doctorates in both theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Along with Croatian, he was fluent in Italian, German and French.He was ordained on 26 October 1930 by Archbishop Giuseppe Palica, Vicegerent of Rome, in a ceremony which also included the ordination of his eventual successor as Archbishop of Zagreb, Franjo Šeper. On 1 November, he said his first mass at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Stepinac wanted to serve the common people, and wanted to be a parish priest.He celebrated his first mass in his home parish of Krašić on 1 July 1931, but instead of being appointed to a parish he was appointed as liturgical master of ceremonies to the Archbishop of Zagreb Antun Bauer on 1 October. He also established the archdiocesan branch of the Catholic charity Caritas in December of that year, and initiated and edited the Caritas magazine. He also temporarily administered the parishes of Samobor and Sveti Ivan Zelina. By this time, Stepinac had become a strong Croatian nationalist, but was not active in Catholic Action or the politically-conservative Croatian Catholic movement. He was considered "conscientious and devoted to his work".AppointmentStepinac was appointed coadjutor bishop to Bauer on 28 May 1934 at the age of 36 years, having been a priest for only three-and-a-half years, being selected after all other candidates had been rejected. Both Pope Pius XI and King Alexander I of Yugoslavia agreed with his appointment, and although the king wanted to withdraw his assent after he received further information about Stepinac, he was dissuaded by Bauer. According to some sources, Stepinac was the fifth or even eighth candidate to be considered for the role, which brought with it the right to succeed Bauer. Stepinac's decision to join the Yugoslav Legion in 1918 made him a more acceptable candidate to King Alexander.According to Stepinac biographer, Friar Šimun Ćorić, Bauer asked Stepinac if he would give his formal consent to being named as Bauer's successor, but after considering the issue for several days, Stepinac refused, saying that he considered himself unfit to be appointed as a bishop. In this version of events, Bauer persisted, and once it was clear that King Alexander had agreed to his appointment, Stepinac consented. Upon his naming, he took In te, Domine, speravi (I place my trust in You, my Lord) as his motto.At the time of his consecration on 24 June 1934, Stepinac was the youngest bishop in the Catholic Church, and was completely unknown to the Croat people. Two weeks after his consecration, he led a 15,000-strong pilgrimage to the old Marian shrine of the Black Madonna at Marija Bistrica. Stepinac followed this with annual pilgrimages to the site. Bauer delegated many tasks and responsibilities to Stepinac, and he travelled widely within the country.Political situationStepinac's appointment came at a time of acute political turmoil in Yugoslavia. In June 1928, the popular leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (Serbo-Croatian: Hrvatska seljačka stranka, HSS) Stjepan Radić and several other Croatian deputies had been shot by a Serb deputy in the Yugoslav Parliament. Two had died immediately and Radić had succumbed to his wounds two months later, the incident causing widespread outrage among Croats. In January of the following year, King Alexander had prorogued Parliament and had effectively become a royal dictator.In April 1933, the new leader of the HSS Vladko Maček had been sent to prison for three years on charges of separatism after he and other opposition figures had issued the Zagreb Points condemning the royal regime and its policies. While Maček was in prison, his deputy Josip Predavec was apparently murdered by the police. When Stepinac wanted to visit Maček in prison to thank him for his well-wishes on Stepinac's appointment as coadjutor bishop, his request was denied.In response to the many messages of support, Stepinac "was sincerely thankful for all the congratulations, but said that he was not enthusiastic about the appointment because it was too heavy a cross for him".On 30 July 1934, Stepinac received the French deputy Robert Schuman, whom he told: "There is no justice in Yugoslavia. [...] The Catholic Church endures much". Throughout 1934, Stepinac spoke with veteran Croatian politician and de facto head of the HSS Ante Trumbić on several occasions. On his views regarding the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Trumbić recorded that Stepinac had "loyalty to the state as it is, but with the condition that the state acts towards the Catholic Church as it does to all just denominations and that it guarantees them freedom". After his consecration, Stepinac visited Belgrade to pledge his allegiance to King Alexander. The journalist Richard West quotes Stepinac:I told the King that I was not a politician and that I would forbid my clergy to take part in party politics, but on the other hand I would look for full respect for the rights of Croats. I warned the King that the Croats must not be improperly provoked and even forbidden to use the very name of Croat, something which I had myself experienced.On 9 October 1934, King Alexander was assassinated in Marseilles by a Bulgarian gunman backed by the Croatian nationalist organisation, the Ustaše. Stepinac, along with Bishops Antun Akšamović, Dionizije Njaradi and Gregorij Rožman, were given special permission by the Papal Nuncio in Belgrade to attend the Serbian Orthodox funeral. Less than a month after the assassination, Stepinac was among those who signed what became known as the "Zagreb Memorandum", 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. The key demand of the Memorandum was that the regency that had succeeded the king should address the "Croatian question", the desire of many Croats for self-determination.Other activitiesIn 1936, he climbed Mount Triglav, the tallest peak in Yugoslavia. In 2006, the 70th anniversary of his climb was commemorated with a memorial chapel being built near the summit. In July 1937, he led a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (then the British Mandate of Palestine). During the pilgrimage, he blessed an altar dedicated to the martyr Nikola Tavelić, who had already been beatified at that time, and was later canonised as a saint. After his return from Palestine, Stepinac began a campaign for the canonisation of Tavelić, and proposed that a monument to him be built in the Velebit mountains overlooking the Adriatic Sea.Archbishop of ZagrebOn 7 December 1937, Bauer died, and though still below the age of forty, Stepinac succeeded him as Archbishop of Zagreb. Presaging the Ustaše reign of terror during World War II, Stepinac addressed a group of university students during Lent in 1938, saying, "Love for one's own nation must not turn a man into a wild animal, which destroys everything and calls for reprisal, but it must enrich him, so that his own nation respects and loves other nations." In 1938, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia held its last election before the outbreak of war. Stepinac voted for Maček's opposition list, while Radio Belgrade spread the false information that he had voted for Milan Stojadinović's Yugoslav Radical Union. In the latter half of 1938, Stepinac had an operation for acute appendicitis.In 1940, Stepinac received the regent Prince Paul at St. Mark's Church as he arrived in Zagreb to garner support for the 1939 Cvetković–Maček Agreement, which had created the autonomous Banovina of Croatia within Yugoslavia. The Agreement was intended to address the "Croatian question", but did not satisfy those demanding full independence. Pope Pius XII declared the period from 29 June 1940 to 29 June 1941 as a jubilee year to celebrate 1300 years of Christianity among the Croats. In 1940, the Franciscan Order celebrated 700 years in Croatia and the order's Minister General Leonardo Bello came to Zagreb for the event. During his visit, Stepinac joined the Third Order of Saint Francis, on 29 September 1940. After the death of Bauer, Stepinac attempted to remain aloof from politics, and tried to unify Croatian Catholic organisations and subordinate them directly to his authority. He was unable to achieve this, probably because he was young and relatively inexperienced, and did not command the level of respect and authority usually accorded an Archbishop of Zagreb.The historian Mark Biondich observes that the Catholic Church had historically been on the fringes of Croatian mass politics and public life, and that the influence of the Church had been further eroded during the interwar period due to the royal dictatorship and the popularity of the anti-clerical HSS.Political and religious viewsDuring his period as coadjutor archbishop and as Archbishop of Zagreb up to the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Stepinac made his views clear on a number of political and religious issues. Foremost among these statements were those regarding Protestantism, Eastern orthodoxy, communism and Freemasonry.Stepinac criticized Protestantism, stating in a speech in 1938 that "the Catholic Church was the greatest civilising force in human history", but railed against those that wanted to deprive the Catholic Church of any influence in public life. He referred to the Reformation as the "Deformation", and denounced Luther as a false prophet who "demolished the principles of legal authority given by the Lord". He went on to blame Protestantism for the "hell in which human society suffers today", and said that it had opened the road to "anarchy in all forms of human life." Stepinac was also highly critical of Eastern orthodoxy, seeing it as a serious danger to both the Catholic Church and Croats in general. The day after the Yugoslav coup d'état of 27 March 1941, he wrote in his diary:All in all, Croats and Serbs are two worlds, the north and south poles, which will never become close except by a miracle of God. The schism is the greatest curse of Europe, almost greater than Protestantism. In it there is no morality, no principle, no truth, no justice, no honesty.On the same day he issued an encyclical to his clergy, calling on them to pray for the young king, and that Croatia and Yugoslavia would be "spared the horrors of war". This was consistent with long-standing practice of the Catholic Church to show loyalty to the state and its leadership.Stepinac was well aware of the fact that an estimated 200,000 mostly Croatian Catholics had converted to the Serbian Orthodox Church in the interwar period. 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. Stepinac viewed the Yugoslav state as essentially anti-Catholic, particularly after the failure of the Yugoslav government to ratify the Concordat with the Vatican, which would have put the Catholic Church on a more equal footing with the Orthodox Church. He was also sensitive to the fact that the Concordat had been vetoed in the Yugoslav parliament partly due to pressure exerted by the Serbian church.In 1940, Stepinac had told Prince P… truncated (49,809 more characters in archive)