Patriarch Irinej of Serbia tried in vain to dissuade Pope Francis from canonizing the Nazi cardinal.
Croatian publicist, journalist and theologian Drago Pilsel published letters from the deceased Patriarch of Serbia Irinej to Pope Francis in connection with the canonization of Croatian Archbishop Aloysius Stepinc.
This was reported by Politika, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
In his messages, the head of the SOC asked the head of the Roman Catholics to remove the issue of the canonization of the Ustashe archbishop from the agenda.
“A saint is someone who can and should be a guide for the universal church, for all Christians. Aloysius Stepinac did not show this in his life,” wrote Patriarch Irenaeus.
In his first letter dated April 30, 2014, the primate drew the pope’s attention to the fact that Stepinac sincerely supported the creation of the Ustashe Independent Croatian State (NDH) and repeatedly participated in creating the atmosphere of intolerance that reigned in this state - “a copy of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy.” .
And when on March 7, 1941, Yugoslavia broke off allied relations with the Third Reich, the cardinal declared this a betrayal, the culprit of which he declared was the Serbian Orthodox Church, and also called Orthodoxy “the greatest curse of Europe.”
The Patriarch notes that Cardinal Stepinac did not protest, but remained silent, when the Ustashe regime “in the most terrible way killed three Orthodox bishops, hundreds of Orthodox priests and monks and hundreds of thousands of Orthodox believers, his fellow citizens.”
According to the patriarch, Stepinac remained silent when the Croatian Ustasha tortured and killed those Orthodox Serbs for the purpose of forced conversion to the Catholic faith, and also when in his state “they cold-bloodedly, according to plan and systematically killed the children of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies.”
According to preliminary estimates, the total number of child victims in the NDH was about 130 thousand people, of which 35 thousand children died in the Jasenovac death camp alone.
Citing a number of other examples, the patriarch points out in a letter to the pope that Stepinac is too often portrayed as a powerless and isolated man, although it is known that he headed the military vicariate of the armed forces of the NDH, whose clergy was largely associated with war crimes.
“We fear that there are too many open questions and unhealed wounds that Cardinal Stepinac symbolizes, and his canonization will only deepen the existing contradictions,” the patriarch wrote and asked the pope to devote time to the personality of the Ustashe cardinal in order to “soberly and wisely consider his place in history.” , especially everything connected with the Jasenovac concentration camp.
In a second letter dated July 10, 2015, Patriarch Irinej writes that the Synod of the SRC gladly accepts the proposal of the Holy See to create a working group of the Roman Catholic Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church, which would consider all open questions regarding the actions of Stepinets. However, this group was never created.
In 1998, Aloysius Stepinac was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.
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