Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.47960/2712-1844.2026.12.63
Pilgrimage of Youth to Široki Brijeg in the Context of the Thirteen Centuries of Christendom among the Croats Jubilee: Historical Framework and Identity Significance
Marina Beus
; University of Mostar Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
The mega-jubilee Thirteen Centuries of Christendom among the Croats, initiated by the Catholic Church in the mid-1970s, represented not only a spiritual and pastoral project but also a kind of a response to the ideological restrictions on religious and national expression in socialist Yugoslavia. The Church devoted special attention to Catholic youth as bearers of religious and social life. Within this context, when speaking about the Herzegovinian region, the organised pilgrimages of youth to Široki Brijeg are of particular importance. These gatherings, bringing together large numbers of youth from the homeland and the diaspora, contributed to the renewal of spiritual values, historical memory, and national identity, and very quickly became the subject of interest for the state security services and the Commission for Religious Affairs, which, by characterising them as clerical-nationalist, attempted to suppress them through various forms of pressure. Despite the communist authorities' constant surveillance, the religious and identity-related momentum that began in Široki Brijeg in the mid-1970s, and later "grew" alongside the great Jubilee of the Church, reached its culmination in the atmosphere surrounding the 1990 pilgrimage, thereby completing an important cycle in the process of renewing the religious and national consciousness of the Croatian people, within the specific context of the late socialist period and on the eve of the changes that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. The youth pilgrimages outlived the repressive structures and, judging by the social climate that followed, left a lasting mark on the younger generation in Herzegovina in terms of recognising their historical roots and religious identity.
Keywords
Catholic Church; mega-jubilee; Široki Brijeg; pilgrimage of youth; identity; communist government; religious movement.
Hrčak ID:
351183
URI
Publication date:
1.10.2026.
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