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THE REASONS FOR THE CESSATION OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS BETWEEN YUGOSLAVIA AND VATICAN IN 1952
Miroslav AKMADŽA
Sažetak
The Communist Party came into power in Yugoslavia after the Second World War. Due to its atheist ideology it did not favour religious groups, particularly the Catholic Church, which it accused of alleged cooperation with the Ustasa regime. On the other hand, the Catholic Church could not accept that power was held by a political structure that openly propagated and implemented anti-religious policies.
Straight after the war, the communist regime started an open battle against the Catholic Church, and especially against the catholic bishops’ ties with the Holy See. The Yugoslav government wanted to rid the Catholic Church of Vatican’s influence and put it under governmental control, thereby removing its only strong and well organised opponent in the country. What followed were arrests and executions of bishops and priests, disablement and prohibition of catechism in state schools, expropriation of church property, outlawing of religious press and other forms of violation of religious freedoms. Catholic bishops, led by archbishop Stepinac, offered resistance to such behavior of the communist regime and expressed their views in an open and critical pastoral letter in September of 1945. As a response to the letter, the communist regime used even harsher measures, culminating with the conviction of archbishop Stepinac to hard labour in 1946.
However, considering the fact that the communist regime was not giving up trying to distance the Catholic Church from the influence of Vatican and put it under governmental control, breaking of diplomatic relations with Vatican was only a matter of time and a suitable motive. When the communist regime started a campaign of establishing priests’ associations with the goal of severing the unity of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, it encountered fierce resistance form Catholic bishops, who were backed by Vatican. Because of this resistance, the Yugoslav government increased the ruthlessness of its policies against the Catholic Church, although there were also some attempts of secret negotiations with the Holy See, and made decisions to prohibit catechism in state schools and remove religious faculties from the make-up of universities in Zagreb and Ljubljana. These moves of the Yugoslav government were made significantly easier by favorable international conditions, chiefly by the better position of Yugoslavia in the eyes of the West due to the tearing asunder of relations with Stalin’s SSSR and Informbiro. As the Bishops’ Conference, encouraged by the Holy See, had made a decision to prohibit the establishing of priests’ associations and ban priests form becoming members of these associations in autumn of 1952, the Yugoslav government found the reason to send a stern note to Vatican and accuse it of interfering in internal affairs. As Vatican had not replied immediately, and in the meantime archbishop Stepinac had been named cardinal, the Yu-goslav government took this act as a motive to break off diplomatic relations with Vatican. The letter that Vatican had in the meantime sent to the Yugoslav government, as a reply to its note, was said to have arrived late. However, regardless of that fact, it criticized the government’s treatment of the Catholic Church so strongly that it is most likely that it would not have changed the Yugoslav decision. Besides explaining its decision to break diplomatic relations with Vatican by stating that Vatican’s interfered in internal affairs of Yugoslavia in the cases of priests’ associations and naming of archbishop Stepinac a cardinal, which it considered to be a provocation, the Yugoslav government, in order to appease the mood of its people, added accusations that Vatican had been on Italy’ side during the solving of the Trieste crisis.
Ključne riječi
Political history; diplomacy; Yugoslavia; Vatican; history of the twentieth century
Hrčak ID:
11909
URI
Datum izdavanja:
10.12.2003.
Posjeta: 9.452 *