The Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) most likely shall
not invite the Pope Benedict XVI to attend the celebration of 1,700
years of the Edict of Milan in the Town of Nis in 2013 since the Synod
had not agreed about that, Tanjug was told at the Patriarchy in
Belgrade.
As said by the Patriarchy the Pope perhaps would have been invited had
he during visit to Croatia this weekend visited Jasenovac and paid
respect to victim of the concentration camp in which 700,000 Serbs and
about 100,000 Jews and Roma were killed during the WWII.
That has not happened but the Pope did visit the grave of Croatian Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac who was on trial after the WWII for cooperation with the Nazis.
The Pope’s disputable praising of Stepinac proved how huge differences over Stepinac between the Catholic and Orthodox Church are.
Jovan Mirkovic, Director of the Museums of Victims of Genocide does not agree with the Pope who said that Stepinac was saving the Jews, Serbs and Roma. ‘There are simple no proofs for such claims but there are proofs about Cardinal’s responsibility for the ustashi crimes’, he says.
The Pope said in Croatia that Stepinac was a humanist who suffered under two totalitarian regimes – of the ustashis and of the communists. Like his predecessor John Paul II, Benedict XVI, too paid respect to Stepinac at his grave in the Zagreb Cathedral.
In a statement to ‘Blic’ Federico Lombardi, Director of Vatican’s Office for media claims that there are testimonies that Stepinac was not supporting Ante Pavelic’s regime, that he was saving all he could and that serious historians have proved that.
‘There are data about saving of Jews’, Lombardi said.
Jovan Mirkovic, former Director of Jasenovac Monument Park says that ‘Vatican’s thesis that Stepinac was saving Jews is without ground’.
‘Had he saved life of a single Jew, Israel would have proclaimed Stepinac a righteous among nations. I think there were certain attempts to that direction but they all failed’, Mirkovic says.
As regards Stepinac’s relation towards the Serbs, everything is clear according to Mirkovic.
‘It is sure that there is his responsibility for enforced turning of Serbs into Catholicism. Secondly, large number of his priests was ustashis committing crimes together with others. Thirdly, he was s supreme military priest and all military priests delegated to ustashi units were under his authority. Stepinac knew about Jasenovac and all horrible things that were going on there’, Mirkovic says.