Original scientific paper
Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Documents of the Department of State Securitiy in the Fifties of the 20. Century
Ivica Lučić
; Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The Communist Party of Yugoslavia considered the Catholic Church the biggest and the most dangerous enemy. The totalitarian communist regime could not stand the existence of an independent organization that was able to gather a part of the population. The communist leaders understood well that the largest amount of Catholic clergy rightfully considered the communist rule as something foreign and dangerous. The period analyzed in this paper covers the decades following the mass executions of the Catholic clergy and a wide range of repressive measures against this clergy that included a wide range of persecution, from the nationalization of Church property, prohibition of movement and religious services, arrests, trials and long-standing prison sentences for archbishops, bishops and another clergy. Gradually the communists gained a firm grip on power and in the meantime the international circumstances were different. Therefore, the communist regime began with more sophisticated methods of repression against the Catholic Church. The regime initiated the first official meetings with the representatives of the Church, and the regime also initiated the organization of the societies of the clergy. Membership in these societies was intended, from the perspective of the communist regime, as a means of differentiating between the clergy that was perceived as »people’s«, as socially positive, from the parts of clergy that were seen as enemies of the system. This shift in the policy of the communist regime was accompanied by a whole range of propaganda measures and the control of clergy, accompanied by various attempts to compromise the clergy with various slanders and infights. Therefore, the attempt of the regime was to weaken the Catholic Church and to lessen its influence over the Croatian Catholic population. Immediately after communist Yugoslavia broke off diplomatic ties with the Holy Seal, in May of 1953, the regime enacted the Law concerning the legal position of the religious communities. The law also set the framework of the regime’s relationship with the Catholic Church. Within this framework, but also beside it, a battle was fought for the establishment of complete communist control, while the Catholic Church fought for mere survival. This battle was especially hard fought concerning the youth and winning its hearts and minds. The communist regime, using its State Security Police, tried to discourage and dissuade the youth from enrolling in seminaries, while the clergy tried to dissuade its parish from joining the communist policies and organizations. The regime closely followed and analyzed the influence of the Catholic Church over the population, the number of people who attended the religious services, the number of baptized and confirmed youth. Priests who, with their spiritual work and private views, entered the sphere of politics were closely controlled by the regime, but even priests who were only diligently doing their religious services were seen as a potential threat. The regime reprimanded the clergy who tried to work with the youth, those who wanted to reconstruct or build religious objects, or those who generally sought to strengthen the influence among the population. The communist regime used the death of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac to blame him for the bad relations between the regime and the Church. As international relations changed, in April 1961 Yugoslav communist regime enacted the Decree concerning the enactment of the Law concerning the legal position of the religious communities. Its aim was to eliminate, more precisely, the border toward the activities of the Catholic Church in society.
Keywords
The Catholic Church; The Communist Party of Yugoslavia; Bosnia andHerzegovina; Yugoslav State Security Police; Persecution; Trials.
Hrčak ID:
225270
URI
Publication date:
27.6.2019.
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