Original scientific paper
INITIATIVES AND ORGANIZATION OF THE SECOND CATHOLIC CONGRESS (MEETING) IN LJUBLJANA IN 1913 AND DR JANKO ŠIMRAK’S REPORT ON THE RELIGIOUS UNION OF SLAVS
Zlatko Matijević
; Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Members of the Croatian Catholic movement, associated with the weekly Dan which was published in Split (1911), gave the initiative for the organization of the Second Croatian Catholic congress. They thought that the congress should be held in Ljubljana so that the members of the Slovenian Catholic movement could also take part in it. This idea was realized only after the archbishop of Ljubljana, Dr Anton Bonaventura Jeglič invited Catholic bishops from Croatia, Dalmatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to take part in the Slovenian Catholic meeting which was held in August 1913 in Ljubljana.
Participation of Croatian representatives at the Ljubljana meeting was organized by the Croatian Catholic Seniors, an exclusive organization which gathered young secular and clerical intellectuals. The Catholic seniors were in fact the leading force of the Croatian Catholic movement as a whole.
Every Croatian representative at the Ljubljana meeting read a report and each of these reports had a certain influence on the further activities of the Croatian Catholic movement. Nevertheless, the report read by Greek Catholic priest Dr Janko Šimrak was especially important and had long term consequences. His report concentrated on relations between the Catholic and the Orthodox Christians in the area of the Balkan peninsula. Šimrak contemplated the possibility of the unification of these two religions which had been separated for almost one thousand years. This was a clear sign that one part of the Croatian Catholic intellectuals saw its future role in the religious and national unification of the South Slavs - Slovenians, Croats, Serbs and Bulgarians. The final consequence of these plans among the Croatian Catholic seniors was the acceptance of the ideology of Yugoslavism and destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which eventually happened in 1918 when the Kingdom of Slovenians, Serbs and Croats was established.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
208547
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2001.
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