The Church has appointed Msgr. Drazen Kutlesa as coadjutor bishop of the Croatian Diocese of Poreč and Pula. The monsignor was formerly an official of the Congreation of Bishops.
Coadjutors have a right to succession, Kutlesa is therefore destined to substitute Bishop Ivan Milovan.
Last summer, Milovan opposed an agreement requested by the Pope, to hand over a Paduan monastery to the Benedictines, in compensation for assets that had been confiscated from them in Croatia during World War Two.
The prelate had turned to the local court, which suspended the papal decree, recalling the Treaty of Osimo signed on 10 October 1975, which established that Italy was obliged to compensate our fellow countrymen who left property in the current State of Croatia.
The compensation agreement, which according to Croatian authorities had, in fact, violated the Treaty of Osimo, provoked the reaction of the Croatian Church and the Bishop, Monsignor Milovan.
A sort of diplomatic case arose between Croatia and the Vatican, but in early August, the Holy See backed the compensation agreement, affirming that the question was still an internal issue within the Church, that it had no “intention of harming” the Country, and that therefore the Church should not be “manipulated” for “political or demagogical” ends.
In actual fact, Italy did not honour the agreement fully, but the Pope’s decision was not based on any problem in bilateral relations between the Former Yugoslavia and Croatia, but was rather to do with the question of justice within the Church, because the extensive wealth had already been confiscated (and some of it squandered) from the Diocese of Pula which regained said assets from the State, following Croatia’s independence.