Croatia: where guns and roses don't mix, and the worm of a hateful war gnaws at an old and militantly Catholic core

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 8, 1993 by Tim McCarthy

And the worm of a hateful war gnaws at an old and militantly Catholic core

ZAGREB, Croatia -- In front of the Zagreb railroad station is an imposing equestrian statute of Tomislav, the 10th century warrior king who wrested the Croats free from Byzantine rule. The bronze sculpture is powerful, invincible, and the king is wielding a cross. It could as well symbolize the militant Catholicism that dominates Croatia today.

When I first visited Zagreb 25 years ago, it was like traveling back through time to Central Europe before World War II. Now there are many more armed men on the streets, but not much else has changed, despite the modern shopping complex under construction between the railroad station and the grandiose Hotel Esplanade.

Streetcars are still the primary form of public transportation. There are no buses downtown. Whole pigs and lambs still hang in the clamoring marketplace at the city's heart. Almost any cobbled street at night could have been a set in an old espionage movie in black and white.

Long an important trade and cultural center, Zagreb now has about 1 million inhabitants (not counting the many war refugees from other parts of Croatia) and next year celebrates its 900th anniversary. It is also the seat of Croatian Catholicism. The Gothic cathedral, probably the primary symbol of the city and the largest Catholic church in the Balkans, oversees everything from its hill in the upper town.

Here is history galore, but there is also a certain local mindset in which it sometimes seems that history hardly moves. This is especially true in the church.

Some of this was running through my mind as I trudged under my 50-pound pack up Strossmayer Street to the century-old Palace Hotel. A taxi driver at the station had recommended it. Across the street was a spacious park, lined with giant plane and chestnut trees.

The street was named, I took it, after Josip Strossmayer, a 19th century Croat bishop who worked to reunite the Roman and Orthodox churches. Strossmayer was a remarkable man, a Croat patriot who wanted total equality for Serbs, a religious healer and political savant, wine lover, horse breeder and renowed raconteur. He fearlessly confronted both the Hapsburg Emperor Franz Joseph and the Vatican and founded the University of Zagreb along the way.

Most of the Slavs that Ss. Cyril and Methodius converted to Christianity ended up in the Orthodox camp after the 1054 schism. In the 19th century, the Vatican still looked on them as apostates. Strossmayer helped resurrect Cyril and Methodius in the Roman church as a symbol of unity among Christians East and West and as a result the Vatican hated his guts.

What a godsend such a religious leader would be in the Balkans today. Unfortunately, the Croatian Catholic mentality is much closer to that of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, the archbishop of Zagreb during World War II, than to that of Strossmayer.

Stepinac was an austere, rigidly pious prelate and, more than 30 years after his death, he remains a figure of great controversy here. No one questions his courage, but whether he was a saint or a murderous bigot depends upon whom you talk to.

It was on his watch that right-wing zealots, including a good many Franciscan priests, butchered up to 400,000 Orthodox Serbs in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia. Other Serbs were forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism. Many commentators think that Stepinac was, at the very least, late to condemn that early version of ethinic cleansing.

He was a fierce Croat nationalist, who welcomed the Nazis to Zagreb because their coming meant an independent Croatia. Tito made him the star of a classic communist show trial in 1946 and dumped him into prison. The Vatican, especially under its current Slavic pope, has all but canonized him.

Whatever the truth about Stepinac, the murder of so many Serbs in his see has everything to do with the hideous brutality of the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina today. (Estimates of the number of Serb deaths here during World War II vary from 75,000 to 400,000, depending upon which side is estimating. Some historians think 300,000 is close to the mark.)

Tito tried to defuse that latent hatred by planting Serbs in Croat regions and Croats in Serb regions, along with a mix of Muslims. But, without a totalitarian state to keep the lid on, political and religious demagoguery took root and Tito's demographic tinkering is fueling the fire of a terrible war.

In the tradition of Stepinac, the Catholic church here is fiercely (and sometimes blindly) nationalist. A Croatian priest I met near the central Bosnian town of Prozor embodied that mindset as well as anyone. He was a refugee from the nearby town of Gornji Vakuf, where especially intense Croat-Muslim combat that week had already killed at least 60 of his parishioners.

His name was Vinco Tomas, a small, gentle man, about 40 years old. Sandals, a wooden cross and a black leather bag over his shoulder gave him the look of a wandering friar. He fingered a rosary while he talked.