Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.58173/kz.78.8
Summary: The Monastery and the Franciscans at Glavotok during the Second World War
Franjo Velčić
; Teologija u Rijeci – Područni studij Katoličkoga bogoslovnog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Rijeka, Hrvatska / Krčka biskupija, Krk, Hrvatska
Abstract
During the Second World War, the monastery of the Glagolitic Franciscan Tertiaries at Glavotok, located at the extreme northwestern part of the island of Krk, first experienced Italian Fascist occupation, when a unit of the Italian army forcibly took up residence in part of the monastery. Three Franciscan brothers from the Krk monastery - Fr. Metod Antončić, Fr. Nikola Milčetić, and Fr. Alfons Vlašić - were taken into internment in southern Italy. The same fate befell Fr. Ignacije Radić, a Tertiary from Sv. Vid near Malinska, during his service in Herceg Novi. During the Nazi German occupation, the Tertiaries at Glavotok suffered as many as four plunderings of monastery property in May 1944, on 22, 24, 27, and 29 May. The first act of reprisal and looting occurred the day after 21 May, when prominent Partisan underground operatives - Mate Mužević, secretary of the Krk District Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia; Jurica Knez, secretary of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia for the Croatian Littoral; and Kuzma Franolić - visited a member of the Franciscan community, Fr. Anđelko Buratović, a sympathizer and most likely a collaborator of the National Liberation Movement. They planted printed Partisan propaganda material in the monastery church and then, as indicated by Partisan sources, informed the Germans, adding accusations that Partisan uniforms were being sewn in the monastery and that weapons were being concealed there. In addition to the looting, reprisals included the arrest of the guardian, Fr. Anđelko Buratović, and his deportation to the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, from which he returned to Glavotok after the fall of Nazism. After the war, Fr. Anđelko Buratović held prominent positions in the political bodies of the new Yugoslavia. He served as a deputy in the Parliament of the People’s Republic of Croatia and as a commissioner of the Religious Affairs Commission, and was a candidate in the elections for the Constituent Assembly in October 1945. During his political career, he succeeded in preserving the landholding maximum of the Glavotok monastery during the agrarian reforms and vigorously advocated in defense of Bishop Josip Srebrnić of Krk. However, he was unable to secure the release of his fellow friar, Fr. Petar Turkaly, who died on 17 July 1948 in the prison at Stara Gradiška, where he was serving a twelve-year sentence. The personal fate of Fr. Anđelko Buratović and his ambivalent role within both ecclesiastical religious structures and socio-political engagement merits further research, particularly with regard to wartime and post-war relations toward his Franciscan community, Bishop Josip Srebrnić, and the communist social order in which he actively participated.
Keywords
Glavotok on Krk; Anđelko Buratović; Josip Srebrnić
Hrčak ID:
346324
URI
Publication date:
20.2.2026.
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