Was Blessed Aloysius Stepinac a Mass Murderer?

[anamchara]

One of my Russian Orthodox friends on Facebook is quite upset about this. I'm not familiar enough with the history to respond.

~Anam-Chara

http://theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/...hristians/

Once the Ustasha Archbishop Stepinac is canonized, he becomes officially a Catholic saint

This is outrageous! I don’t know how come, and  about the process,  but it’s on Pope Franz to make the right decision – says  Efraim Zurof , director of the center  ” Simon Vizental “,  Jerusalem. Zurof announced  addressing a letter of protest to Vatican .

According to Croatian media, Stepinac should be declared a saint by the end of the year , since even the last condition for canonization has been fulfiled – the competent Medical Commission has determined one case of  the ‘miraculous healing through the intercession of Blessed Aloysius Stepinac’.

- Stepinac was the supreme military vicar in the Independent State of Croatia ( NDH )  army, and therefore responsible; he bore the blame for the monstrous crimes of Roman Catholic priests members of Ustasha and Domobran units . He was one of the initiators of the forcible convertion of the  Orthodox Serbs . In his letter to Pope Pius XII , to the middle of the 1943.  there were about 244,000 Serbs forcibly converted –  and these are some of his ” merits “, explains  Dr. Veljko Djuric Mišina , historian and director of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade.

Mišina adds that there is not a single traces that Stepinac had ever protested because of the crimes commited against Serbian Orthodox Church ( SPC ) nor against  Serbian and Jewish people;
He intervened only in few cases, even though he ackowledged what was going on in  concentration camps throughout Croatia and Herzegovina, as well as for hundreds of thousands of murdered Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

- Certain claims (from Croatian and German side mostly) that Stepinac protested and intervened against NAZI Croatia crimes are myth, because not a single of the similar facts have ever been  discovered neither in his documents, nor  his diary.

After World War II, Tito (Croat) and Bakaric (another Croat) made a backstair deal, so the monstrous Bishop was not tried for crimes against Serbs , Jews and Roma, but for  ” pronounced anti-communism , hiding treasures and archives of the Ustasha regime and for aiding terrorist groups infiltrated in Yugoslavia . “

The Jasenovac camp complex was situated along the Sava River. Thousands of victims were thrown into the Sava, some floating all the way to Belgrade.

Historian Predrag Markovic stressed the danger of perceiving Stepinac  a victim of the communist regime,  an ordinary  priest of the Roman Catholic Church who followed  the policy of Pope Pius XII, and didn’t speak  out against  Holocaust

- We have similar cases in Estonia and Hungary , where under the cloak of rehabilitation of victims of communism , in fact , they  rehabilitate Nazi criminals.

Reactions to the initiative of the Vatican:
Efraim Zurof,  Center ” Vizental “
Everyone who has been an associate of Ante Pavelic and supported the policy of the Independent Croatian state should be declared a war criminal , not a saint. As soon as we get all the information ,  we shall address a letter of protest to the Vatican .

Predrag Markovic , historian
Stepinac was far complexed personality than the majority thinks . He was not a villain , but we can talk about his personal responsibility for what was done to over a million victims of the Independent state of Croatia and Catholic church in Croatia.

Velibor Džomić , Archpriest
It’s their (Catholic)  thing  who will they declare saint .  Like nation, like saint  …  I believe it is far from the Christian virtues which adorn all these holy men we learn about in Gospels.

[austenbosten]

Stepinac is another case where the Communist government seeking to trash Catholics decided to condemn Bl Stepinac by way of Guilt by Association. Just like Pope Pius XII is trashed by the Communist governments.


Here is a good article debunking the mess http://www.catholicsocialscientists.org/...ection.pdf


Excerpt:

    In 1946, prior to Stepinac’s trial, the Communist Party had published a book that contained forged and carefully selected and edited documents designed to make Stepinac and the Catholic Church look bad. In the 1960s, Italian writer Carlo Falconi sought permission from the Yugoslav authorities to research Croatian archives for a book that he was writing on Pope Pius XII. Party officials eventually handed over some original documents and provided Falconi with a copy of the 1946 book. Neither Falconi nor the others who came after him knew that the evidence had been carefully manufactured to assure that Stepinac appeared to have been a collaborator of the Ustashi (and that Pius appeared sympathetic to the Nazis). He was not given access to any materials or archives that could contradict the communist-manufactured propaganda. Thus, on the basis of forged and carefully selected documents assembled by the Yugoslav secret police, Falconi wrote his book, The Silence of Pius XII.

    Falconi’s book was extremely successful. It shaped much of the early scholarship on Pope Pius XII, and it remains much cited to this day. John Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope made much use of the materials Falconi had used. In fact, Cornwell cited Falconi by name nine times, and he praised Falconi’s “painstaking” research. Falconi and the works that built upon his book have tainted the entire investigation into Pope Pius XII. As Croatian scholar Jure Kristo has explained: “The documents which both men [Falconi and Cornwell] used had, of course, been assembled by the Yugoslav secret police and fed to Falconi in order to compromise Pope Pius XII as ‘Hitler’s Pope.’” These documents have confounded scholars of Pope Pius XII for decades.

    “Cardinal Stepinac, Pope Pius XII, and the Roman Catholic Church During the Second World War,” Ronald J. Rychlak, The Catholic Social Science Review 14 (2009): 367-383

[eschera]

I agree with austenbosten, another Communistic revisionist screed on an honorable Blessed. 
See the 1955 movie, The Prisoner, loosely based on his life:

The Interrogator: You're an enemy of society, like the schizophrenic, or the paranoiac.
You're dangerous, because you mislead the poor, the uneducated, the silly.
Only because you're wrongheaded. In time, we'll get to the root of the trouble. And you can be cured.
The Cardinal: You believe it?
The Interrogator: Yes, I do believe it.
The Cardinal: God give me cunning against your skill.



The Cardinal: Shall I be allowed a priest before I die?
The Interrogator: There will be no need.
The Cardinal: I beg of you to let me see a priest.
The Interrogator: You're not to die.
The Cardinal: No? I'm to be hanged.
The Interrogator: The sentence has been commuted.
The Cardinal: What are they afraid of? Martyrdom? No one could make the world see me as a martyr now.
The Interrogator: It has been commuted.
The Cardinal: I've eased my mind with the thought of death. I can't see beyond it.