"In the name of the people.
"The accused Alojzije Stepinac - he is guilty!"
With these words begins the first point of the judgment from 1946 against Archbishop Alojzij Stepinac, until then the first man of the Catholic Church in Croatia, today one of the most controversial people in the modern history of the Balkans.
Stepinac was accused of congratulating the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in 1941, while Europe was burning in the Second World War, established on the territory of today's Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Srem in Vojvodina, with the full cooperation of Nazi Germany.
The official verdict also states that "Stepinac visited the executioner Ante Pavelić", the founder of the Ustasha movement, who was the head of the NDH.
The puppet state of the NDH established a one-party regime and began to deal with more than a million Orthodox Serbs in Croatia.
The idea was to convert part of the Serbs to Catholicism, while others were expelled or brutally killed, he writes. Britannica.
"My conscience is clear and I have nothing to blame," Stepinac said at the trial.
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Decades later, officials of Serbia and Croatia, the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church in Croatia, as well as numerous historians, continue to argue about his conscience, but also his guilt.
"Stepinac was certainly not responsible for the Ustasha crimes," said Rory Yeomans, a British historian who studies the Ustasha movement and the NDH, for the BBC in Serbian.
"He really tried to save people, mostly Jews, who had converted to Catholicism."
However, his diaries "clearly show that he saw Serbs in Croatia as heretics," and that "his criticism of the Ustasha regime was weak," says Jomens.
"He could have done much more to speak out, especially against the anti-Serb and anti-Jewish policy in the NDH".
Stepinac was never officially a member of the Ustasha movement, Hrvoje Klasić, a Croatian historian, told the BBC in Serbian.
"In Croatia, Stepinac is seen as an innocent who ended up in prison and as a saint, while in Serbia he is absolutely evil, a war criminal, Ustasha and someone who participated in the genocide of Serbs," explains Klasić.
Serbian historian Veljko Stanić says that, until the end of the Second World War, Stepinac will not seriously distance himself from the NDH, and even Pavelić will offer him to take over power after the departure of the Ustasha in 1945, which he refused.
Stepinac before World War II
In most photos from the NDH period, Stepinac has a cold and sharp look.
Thin, with sunken cheeks, an extremely tight face and deep sideburns, in 1946 he calmly, without too many facial expressions and movements, awaited the verdict, as evidenced by the photos from the trial.
"It is interesting that Stepinac was in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, and later joined the volunteer Yugoslav legion, so he swore an oath to the Serbian king Petar Karađorđević and went to the Thessaloniki front," says Klasić.
After the First World War, on December 1, 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed, but disagreements soon began as to whether the state should be decentralized or not.
The political representatives of Croats and Serbs argued about this in particular.
Stepinac, born on May 8, 1898 in the village of Krašić. after the war, he entered the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb, but quickly left it.
Only in 1924 did he decide to become a priest, and six years later, he joined the church.
Political tension in the country culminated on June 20, 1928, when Serbian politician Puniša Račić shot a group of deputies of the Croatian Peasant Party, including party leader Stjepan Radić.
Croatian deputies withdraw from the parliament, and on January 6, 1929, King Aleksandar Karađorđević introduces a dictatorship.
A day later, Ante Pavelić secretly founded a Croatian revolutionary organization - the Ustaše - in Zagreb, in order to fight against, as they claimed, the terror of King Alexander.
Guilty or quiet?
Stepinac became the head of the Catholic Church in Zagreb in 1937, just a few years before, with the help of Germany, at the beginning of the Second World War, Pavelić took power in Croatia.
In a radio broadcast, former Austro-Hungarian colonel Slavko Kvaternik declared the NDH at the time when German soldiers were entering Zagreb.
Later, Stepinac will also be charged with "during the first days of the occupation, he hosted a dinner for Ustasha emigrants and took pictures with them".
Kiril Feferman, historian and professor at Ariel University in Israel, explains that Stepinac may have had doubts about the NDH, but, as a Croatian patriot, he evidently supported it.
"He was one of the two prominent figures in Croatia, along with Anta Pavelić, and as the religious head of the Croatian nation, he was subordinate to the Vatican and Pope Pius XII," Feferman told the BBC in Serbian.
The relationship between Stepinac and Pope Pius was important, he adds.
"He lived in the time in which he witnessed and was aware of what was happening in the NDH.
"As a Catholic priest of the highest rank, he was close to Anto Pavelić, which means that he was aware of what was happening in the NDH, especially with the persecution of minorities, Jews and Serbs," says Feferman.
It is hard to imagine that Stepinac would endanger his own life by opposing the official policy, the historian points out.
"Stepinac knew prominent and less prominent Jews and helped them survive, and that is his merit.
"At the same time, as far as I know, he did not publicly oppose the genocidal policy of the NDH and the Holocaust," he says.
Stepinac spent more time in speeches and sermons criticizing nudity, cursing and lax moral standards among ordinary Croats than in condemning the crimes of the regime, recalls British historian Yeomens.
Photos of him together with Pavelić, as well as the letters he sent to him and Pope Pius XII in the Vatican, indicate that Stepinac knew about many atrocities on the territory of the NDH, but he talked about them too quietly and inconspicuously, says Hrvoje Klasić.
"The fact is that there are letters where he writes to the authorities in NDH and does not say that people should not be taken to Jasenovac, but only says that it should be done in a more humane way.
"Stepinac knew that there were camps, he was never in them, but I also wonder what he could have done," says Klasić.
What he did not do is a much greater sin than what he did, he believes.
"He could have thundered more from the altar against Ustastka, because he never did that.
"He often turned a blind eye to crimes and everything that was done," Klasić explained.
Apart from Stepinac, it is also important to look at the behavior of the Catholic Church during the reign of the NDH.
"Many Catholic priests played a terrible role because they participated in the massacres and crimes of the Ustasha movement.
"Stepinac talked about converting to Catholicism to allow people to convert to Catholicism, and then let them return to their faith, just to save themselves," Klasić points out.
He was "a Croatian nationalist, but not of the Ustasha type, unlike many Catholic priests, who were and participated in crimes."
"Ante Pavelić and Stepinac couldn't see eye to eye, but that doesn't mean he didn't like NDH," he explains.
In a private letter to Pavelić, Stepinac allegedly wrote that he was a "shameful scum of the NDH", says historian Stanić.
From the conversation with Tito, to the arrest
As soon as World War II ended, in May 1945, Alojzij Stepinac was handcuffed in Zagreb.
The new, communist government in Croatia arrested him twice.
Between the two arrests, Stepinac spoke with Josip Broz Tito, but later ended up at the trial held in an improvised courtroom in Zagreb.
He was found guilty on October 11, 1946 and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
"The fact that he was first detained, then released, and then arrested again only in 1946 between the lines shows that the new, communist authorities knew that he was not a criminal.
"At that time, the authorities knew everything and Tito would not have sat with Stepinac in the office and negotiated if he thought he was a criminal," Klasić points out.
Tito may not have "asked for the separation of the Catholic Church from the Vatican, but there was some distancing, because he wanted Stepinac to be loyal to him".
"Then a letter arrives, in September 1945, where Stepinac and the bishops write to the communist authorities and protest against the confiscation of church property and persecution," adds Klasić.
It was the final straw, explains the historian.
Stepinac served his sentence in the prison in Lepoglava until 1951, when he was transferred to his native Krašić, where he was kept until his death on February 10, 1960.
Klasić believes that the story that Stepinac was abused in prison is not true.
"He had preferential treatment, his own room, a chapel, food was brought to him and he had no connection with anyone.
"It was said that he was poisoned, but I don't believe it, because if they wanted to kill him, they would have done it immediately, not ten years later," says Klasić.
Unlike Stepnica, Pavelić managed to escape to Argentina, the post-war homeland of many Nazi and fascist officers and soldiers.
He survived an assassination there in 1957, and was later transferred to Spain, where he died two years later.
Thorny road to the saint
In the strained relations between Serbia and Croatia after the breakup of Yugoslavia, Stepinac was another stumbling block when Pope John Paul II declared him "blessed" in 1998.
Canonization - when the blessed one is declared a saint - has not yet happened.
"In the process of Blessed Aloysius, as well as in all other processes for beatification and sainthood in the church, canonization is the final point, so it is rightly expected one day," says Tomislav Hačko, one of those in charge of the issue of beatification and sainthood in Zagreb archdiocese, for the BBC in Serbian.
After a review of Stepinac's trial, initiated by his nephew Boris, in 2016, a court in Croatia overturned the verdict passed six decades earlier, concluding that the process was not fair at the time.
"As far as the family is concerned, the procedure is over.
"We are looking forward to the future canonization of Blessed Aloysius," said Kristina Stepinac Terzić, Boris Stepinac's daughter, for the BBC in Serbian.
How to become a saint in the Catholic Church
- Five years must pass after the death;
- Checking if someone is a "man of God", which means that an investigation can be opened about his life;
- Proven miracles. It is necessary to attribute the miracle to prayers;
- Canonization - the last step in declaring an individual saint.
The position of the Serbian Orthodox Church on Stepinac and the possible canonization was not received by the BBC in Serbian.
Patriarch Porphyry previously stated that "far from believing that he (Stepinac) was directly and immediately involved in any type of crime".
"However, not only as a priest, a Christian, but as any ordinary person, I cannot hide that, at the very least, I have a dilemma, a problem with certain actions, words, attitudes of Stepinac," said Porfirije at the time.
Porphyry's predecessor, Patriarch Irenaeus, he instructed pismo to Pope Francis in which he expresses his opposition to the canonization of Stepinac.
"Cardinal Stepinac wholeheartedly supported the creation of the NDH, showered praise on its leadership and repeatedly participated in the creation of an atmosphere of intolerance.
"Unfortunately ... he did not protest, but remained silent in the face of the fact that in his country children of unfit citizens - Serbs, Jews, Roma - were killed in cold blood, systematically and systematically," the letter states.
In 2016, Pope Francis established the Catholic-Orthodox Commission which met several times, but the details of the conversation remained far from the public eye.
Efraim Zuroff, director of the "Simon Wiesenthal" Center in Jerusalem, "unequivocally" opposed Stepinac being declared a saint.
"He supported the NDH, which is guilty of genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma, and he was also the personal priest of Ante Pavelić, one of the biggest mass murderers in history," the Israeli historian is clear.
The initiative to make him a saint is mainly based on the idea that he died in defense of his faith against the new communist authorities, explains Serbian historian Stanić.
"Stepinac resolutely adhered to the new communist order, opposed the nationalization of church property and the abolition of religious education in schools.
"But it is forgotten that he did not stick so firmly to the Ustasha authorities and that he missed many opportunities to raise his voice more decisively against the crimes committed against Serbs, Jews, Roma, but also Croats in the NDH," says Stanić.
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