Sir, - While Fintan O'Toole (The Irish Times, October 9th) gives valid reasons for questioning the recent beatification of Archbishop Stepinac, he fails to ask or answer the question: Why, if Archbishop Stepinac committed "war crimes" under the fascist Ustashe regime in Croatia, was he not arrested and brought to trial as soon as the war was over and not as late as September 1946?
As early as May 1945 the criminal head of the Independent State of Croatia, Ante Pavelic, accompanied by the Ustashe's Minister of the Interior, Andrija Artukovitch, the Minister of Religious Affairs, Milke Budak, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Sanic, and probably the commandant of Jasenovac concentration camp, Maks Luburic, were travelling in a column of 50,000 men before Tito's advancing Partisans towards the Austrian frontier and sanctuary. But Archbishop Stepinac was not one of their fellow travellers; he stayed at his post in Zagreb. It should be remembered that Tito himself was willing to collaborate with the Nazis in the "March Consultations" of 1943.
Artukovich, who ordered the massacre of 4,000 Serbs in May of 1941 was, according to Hubert Butler, the member of the regime whom Archbishop Stepinac urged that same month "to separate the Catholic non-Aryans from nonChristian non-Aryans in relation to their social position and in the manner of treating them." At the end of the war Artukovitch got from Austria to Switzerland and then to Ireland. He spent a year in Ireland before joining his brother in California. According to Stepinac's secretary, Father Lackovitch, Stepinac had seen Artukovitch almost daily and Artukovitch had been "the leading Catholic layman of Croatia and the lay spokesman of Cardinal Stepinac and had consulted him on the moral action of every action he took." (Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill.)
Like many of the Ustashe, Artukovitch was educated at Siroki Brijeg, the Franciscan seminary near Mostar that became the command post for the extermination of Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina which began in April 1941. This monastery is very familiar to Irish pilgrims to Medjugorje as it is included in the itinerary of most pilgrimages and many Franciscan priests from there look after the spiritual welfare of the millions who visit Medjugorje. However, pilgrims are not told how a law student from Siroki Brijeg won a competition in 1941 by cutting the throats of 1,360 Serbs with a special knife, for which he was presented in the great hall of the monastery with the prize of a gold watch, a silver service, a roast suckling pig and some wine.
In a letter written to Archbishop Stepinac in August 1941 the then Bishop of Mostar, Dr Mishitch, described among other atrocities how the Ustashe had brought "six wagons full of mothers, girls and children under eight to the station at Surmanci, where they were taken out of the wagons, brought into the hills and thrown alive, mothers and children, into deep ravines". It is believed they numbered 600. Those ravines are less than two miles from Medjugorje. Near the end of the war three Franciscans from the parish of Medjugorje, members of the Ustashe, died fighting alongside the German SS at the Siroki Brijeg monastery and they are now commemorated there as martyrs who died fighting the Communists. At the conclusion of peace talks held in Medjugorje in May 1993, President Tudjman of Croatia invoked the "apparitions" in the cause of Croats of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Madonna's appearance had, said the former Communist, heralded "the re-awakening of the Croatian nation". He didn't seem to notice that he was not actually in the Croatian nation that day but standing on the soil of the Democratic Independent Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
While the Serbs have their Fields of Blackbirds - in the battlefield of Kosovo Polje - the Croats have their Hill of Hawks - in Medjugorje. During the conflict in Bosnia a special Mass in the church in Medjugorje was held each week for and attended by Croat soldiers "at the front line". The front line was Mostar, where 50,000 Muslim men, women and children were bombarded daily by Croatian artillery supplied from Croatia intent on annexing Western Herzegovina in a Greater Croatia. From the church of Medjugorje they were sent out on their mission of cleansing western Herzegovina of its native Muslim population. These Muslims were pushed across the "Roman" bridge spanning the Neretva river to the enclave on the eastern side of Mostar. At their backs, on the hills, was Serb artillery. According to Franciscan Father Jozo Zovko from Siroki Brijeg, writing in The Medjugorje Herald in August 1993, victory over Satan's forces was assured to the soldiers because "the prayer of the Holy Rosary can win mighty battles. On October 7th 1571 Europe was invaded by a Turkish Fleet [Muslim] which outnumbered the European fleet by three to one. St Pius V called for a Rosary Crusade and the Turkish fleet was completely destroyed." He went on to say: "We don't need arms . .. our soldiers wear these beads round their necks for protection."
Miraculously, the declaration of Croatian Independence on June 25th, 1991 coincided with the 10th anniversary of the apparitions at Medjugorje - proving that Danilo Kis was probably right in his observation that nationalism is an ideology of banality. - Yours, etc., Rev Peter O'Callaghan,
Inch, Killeagh, Co Cork.