A war time inauguration mass in Svetvinčenat

Abstract

The A. describes the religious and spiritual preparation of the parishioners of Svetvincenat for the ordaining and inauguration mass of a local young man, Miroslav Bulesic, who studied theology in Rome. The local parish priest Antun Cukaric wanted to exalt this exceptional event, so he called for the help of Ratimir Beletic, a priest from Pula who had also studied theology in Rome. The preparation of the congregation consisted of persuasion, devoutness and sacraments, so that they may meet the feast for Bulesic in April 1943 in a thorough manner. In that period the "partisan popular liberation movement", headed by Ivan Motika from "Base 5" started to spread in the territory of Svetvincenat. In May and June 1943 he sent two reports to his superiors, in which he described the religious preparations as if they were a direct attack by the Vatican on the newly bom partisan movement. He made his conclusions on the fact that Bulesic had returned from Rome, as had Beletic some time before. In order to be more convincing, he also involved Don Ivan Pavic, concocting all three of them into a fabricated Vatican conspiracy against the partisans in the Svetvincenat area. Ivan Pavic, disliked by the fascist authorities and politically suspect, was confined to Southern Italy in 1940, from where he could not move without a written consent by the police. Although he wanted very much to come to the ordaining of Bulesic, whom he prepared for seminary and followed through his schooling, he did not even attempt to request permission for the voyage, neither had he the courage to travel without the police authority's permission. As he could not fulfill his desire, when he heard of Bulesic's martyr's death on the 24th August 1947, he courageously broke the police line the day after that and lead the funeral in Lanisce. The researchers of the partisan movement always considered Motika’s war reports indisputable, so that nobody ever had the courage to publicly question their truthfulness.