The Croatian Catholic Church since 1990

Abstract

IThroughout the existence of Yugoslavia the Roman Catholic Church was always made aware that it was a minority Church. Already in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia the Church was unable to obtain a concordat even though the Vatican had obtained similar concordats with most other European governments. Later, after the Second World War, the communist government used the fact of fascist collaboration by a certain sector of the clergy to tarnish the entire Church, even though both the Vatican and Archbishop Stepinac had spoken out during the war to criticise the involvement of Catholic priests within the Ustasa and - at least on Stepinac's part - to condemn Ustasa policies of genocide and expulsion. I Much later, after the election of Karol Wojtyla to the papacy in 1978, despite the strong desire on the part of Slovene and Croatian Catholics to receive their pontiff the communists repeatedly vetoed plans to invite John Paul 11 to the country. In old Yugoslavia - whether the Kingdom of 1918-41 or the socialist state of 1945-912 - the Roman Catholic Church was a minority church and was kept in a position of inferiority. Although I have elsewhere explored the 'victim complex' of the Serbian Orthodox Church' the Catholic Church clearly occupied a position inferior to that of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the interwar kingdom, was attacked far more bitterly in communist Yugoslavia than was the Serbian Orthodox Church or the Islamic community, and was from time to time painted as an 'Ustasa Church'; neither the Serbian Church nor the Islamic community suffered any comparable indignity. Under such circumstances the Catholic Church could only breathe a sigh of relief when socialist Yugoslavia broke up. Whatever we might conclude about the benefits and liabilities of socialist Yugoslavia, and about the merits and demerits of its disso­ lution, from the standpoint of the Catholic Church and Vatican interests the breakup of multiconfessional Yugoslavia was virtually an unmixed blessing. It was therefore no surprise that the Vatican was one of the first states to extend diplomatic recogni­ tion to the new Croatian state in 1991.