Religious cleansing in the Republic of Croatia
THROUGHOUT the continuing war in former Yugoslavia, Croatia has remained steadfastly and fanatically Roman Catholic. The Republic is proposing legislation that will give Roman Catholicism the predominance in the whole life of the people and severely discriminate against Protestant and other religions.
In 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded and divided by Germany and Italy. Croatia, together with Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Srem was made a Fascist satellite, the so-called Independent State of Croatia. At its head was placed the Chief of the Croatian Fascists or Ustashis, the notorious Ante Pavelitch. The Serbs within the new State, regarded as schismatics by the Church of Rome because of their Orthodox religion, were now to experience their worst suffering yet at the hands of the Ustashis, as agents of the Vatican. “The Inquisition, as we shall soon see,” says Edmond Paris in his well documented The Vatican Against Europe, “was a feeble instrument compared with the horrors that were now to be perpetrated by the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church.” The policy of the Ustashi Government was stated by its Minister of Education: “We will kill some Serbs, deport others, and the remainder shall be forced to embrace the Roman Catholic religion.” The Minister of Justice declared at a public meeting on 5 July 1941, “We cannot allow the Serbs to live in Croatia. There is one God and one nation — the Croatian nation.”
Between 1941 and 1945 not less than 300,000 Orthodox Serbs were deported and 500,000 were massacred, thousands of them suffering the most bestial tortures before they died. Not only were Roman Catholic clergy acting as members of the Ustashi government but others of them played a leading part in the actual slaughter of the Serbs.
Today, in Croatia, the government is in the process of enacting a law which will make Roman Catholic religious education compulsory in state schools, and establish a “Catholic military vicariate” within the army. Only religious denominations with at least 30,000 members will be recognised by the state; this will mean that the small Protestant denominations and organisations will be outlawed.
Mr Stanko Jambrek, secretary of the Protestant Evangelical Council in Croatia, has said that the aim of the new law is to bring about “religious cleansing”. He added, “The State is making a contract with the Roman Catholic Church first, and then, on the basis of this agreement, establishes the law for all other religious denominations.”
Let us never be asleep to the fact that Rome, where and when she has the opportunity, will show that she is semper idem, always the same, in her aim to have absolute dominion and in brooking no opposition to the fulfilment of her ambitions.