Serbian Patriarch Reacts Against Pope
Al
Kosovo and Metohija
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Glas Javnosti Daily, Belgrade
03 June 2003
Serbian text at:
http://www.glas-javnosti.co.yu/danas/srpski/T03060301.shtml
Why Serbian Patriarch Pavle will not welcome the head of the Roman Catholic
Church to Republika Srpska
Mass at massacre site, amnesty for crimes
Foreign Minister Svilanovic proposed that Patriarch Pavle welcome the Pope in
Banja Luka; the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church refused. Mass at the
massacre site of Petricevac, where Ustashe* slaughtered 2,730 Serbs, among them
500 children. Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church: a provocation
by PETAR PASIC
(PHOTO: Franciscan Fr. Filipovic, known as "Brother Satan", a commander of the
Concentration camp Jasenovac and a brother of the monastery at which Pope John
Paul II would serve mass on June 22)
The scheduled visit of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul
II, to Republika Srpska and Banja Luka has stirred up strong passions both in
Republika Srpska and in Serbia. Serbs on both sides of the Drina River are
especially unhappy with the announcement that the Pope will serve mass at a
massacre site near Banja Luka. According to the itinerary, the head of the
Roman Catholic Church will serve in the Franciscan monastery Petricevac, where
Ustashe [World War II Croatian Fascists] performed genocide against the Serbs,
slaughtering 2,730 people, 500 of whom were children.
According to announcements, the Pope's visit to this part of Republika Srpska
is expected to be glamorous. His trip will cost approximately five million
euros; new grass lawns will be built for the "popemobile"; and several hundred
thousand Catholic believers are expected to welcome the Holy Father.
Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church have indicated that it is their
wish that the Pope's host be the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, His
Beatitude the Serbian Patriarch Kyr Pavle.
"Glas" has learned, however, that the Patriarch will not welcome the Pope on
June 22.
"Prior to the conclusion of the session of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the
Serbian Orthodox Church from May 13 to May 24, Serbia and Montenegro foreign
minister Goran Svilanovic visited the Patriarchate and the Bishops of the
Serbian Orthodox Church. At that time Svilanovic proposed to the Patriarch that
host the Pope's visit; however, the Patriarch rejected this, most probably due
to the location where the Pope will serve mass," one of the bishops of the
Serbian Orthodox Church and member of the Holy Synod told "Glas".
This senior church officials emphasized that under the circumstances it is not
customary for the head of the Roman Catholic Church to be welcomed by a senior
delegation of the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church and that this would
probably be done by Bishop Jefrem of Banja Luka, who, it appears, has not yet
received an official invitation.
Dr. Milan Bulajic, the president of the Genocide Investigation Fund, expressed
his bitterness and disbelief that no one has officially condemned the Pope's
intent to serve mass at the massacre site.
"From Petricevac Monastery the Ustashe, led by Franciscan parish priest
Vjekoslav (Tomislav) Filipovic, set out on a massacre of the Serb population.
In just ten hours, on February 6, 1942, in the villages of Drakulic, Motike and
Sargovic, they slaughtered no less than 2,730 Serbs, 500 of whom were children.
The genocide was committed by the Second Corporal Battle Unit of Ustashe leader
Ante Pavelic, headed by Ueberlieutenant Josip Mislov and Captain Nikola Zelic,
who were led by the priest Filipovic," Dr. Bulajic told "Glas".
One of the greatest pogroms against innocent Serb civilians began at dawn with
the takeover of the Rakovac mine, where 37 workers were killed with a pickaxe.
The worst scene of the monstrous crime occurred at the school, where 60
children were slaughtered before the eyes of their teacher, who lost her mind
as a result.
Ante Pavelic, the chief of the USTASHE Nazi regime in Croatia, with the Roman
Catholic Episcopate
and the recently beatified Card. Aloisius Stepinac (right from Pavelic) Vatican
has never condemned Ustashe movement
and said truth about open involvement of the RCatholic clergy in its ranks
According to "MAGNUM CRIMEN" ("The Great Crime") of author Viktor Novak, who
described bestial acts of the Ustashe against the Serbs during World War II, a
brother of the Petricevac Monastery, Tomislav Filipovic, entered the classroom
during class with 12 Ustashe, imitating Jesus Christ and his twelve apostles.
He ordered teacher Dobrila Martinovic to bring a Serb child to the front of the
class.
Suspecting nothing, the teacher called Radojka Glamocanin, a pretty and neat
child, the daughter of Djuro Glamocanin, a respected citizen of Drakulic then
imprisoned in Germany. The brother gently received the child, lifted her to the
lectern and then slowly began to slit her throat in front of the other
children, the teacher and the Ustashe. Panic broke out; the horrified children
screamed and jumped. The brother calmly and in Jesuit-like, dignified fashion
addressed the Ustashe: "Ustashe, by this in the name of God I baptize these
degenerates and you should follow my example. I am the first to accept all sin
onto my soul; I will confess you and absolve you of all sin."
The priest then ordered the teacher to take all the Serb children into the
schoolyard. He issued the same order to teacher Mara Tunjic in another
classroom. In the schoolyard, on the trodden snow, he placed the 12 Ustashe in
a circle and then ordered the children to run next to them. As each child
passed, an Ustashe would gouge out an eye and push it into the child's slit
belly; he would cut off an ear from a second, the nose from a third, a finger
from a fourth, the cheeks from a fifth... And so on until all the children
collapsed. Then the Ustashe finished them off in the snow. Priest Filipovic
later became the administrator of the Jasenovac concentration camp and earned
the nickname "Brother Satan".
Did the long announced visit of the head of the Roman Catholic Church to Bosnia
and Herzegovina have to begin with mass on a terrible Serb massacre site is the
question which will surely remain in the focus of public attention in coming
days.
Blessing of crime site
"The Pope has visited Croatia twice and Jasenovac not once. He has never
addressed an apology to the victims of the genocide in which representatives of
the Catholic Church participated. Now he is planning to hold Holy Mass at a
Serb massacre site and to beatify a layman, Ivan Merc, who founded the Catholic
youth movement from which Ustashe youth later sprang," emphasized Bulajic,
adding: "Isn't the Pope blessing a crime site and amnestying criminals by this
act?"
Church opposed
The bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church consider the decision to have the
Pope serve mass in Petricevac as a provocation, a member of the Holy Synod told
"Glas". "The bishops are divided on the issue of whether to meet with the Pope,
even though the dominant view is that talks are certainly necessary. However,
with respect to the mass at Petricevac, all the bishops were opposed," said the
senior church official. "Glas" learned that the bishops spoke about
"acquainting the Pope with crimes against Serbs committed in this region during
World War II."
Marovic visits the Pope
VATICAN (Beta) - Serbia and Montenegro president Svetozar Marovic expressed the
hope yesterday that intensive work could be done in the next year on a visit by
Pope John Paul II to the state union.
After talks with the Pope and the state secretary of the Holy See, Cardinal
Angelo Sodana, Marovic said that the possibility of a papal visit to Serbia and
Montenegro was discussed. He added that, as head of the state union, he could
invite the Pope to visit Serbia and Montenegro but that he wants the visit to
occur at a moment when the conditions are right in the view of the Serbian
Orthodox Church. The Pope expressed his support for peace and stability in
Serbia and Montenegro and Southeastern Europe. The head of the Roman Catholic
Church welcomed the activities of the Serbia and Montenegro government toward
affirmation of dialogue and compromise.
Translated by www.serbian-translation.com (June 4, 2003)
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*Ustashe - Croatian NAZI troops during the Second World War. Parallel of German
SS units.
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Related Links (Ustashe movement, Jasenovac camp, Involvement of the RCatholic
clergy)
Museum of Holocaust (Washington D.C) - HOLOCAUST ERA IN CROATIA - JASENOVAC
1941-1945
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/jasenovac/
Jasenovac - Pavelic Papers
An independent project researching the history of the Ustashe Movement
http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/jasenovac/
Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic "BROTHER SATAN"
http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/filipovic/index.html
Franciscan priest and enthusiastic commandant at Jasenovac. Known to inmates as
Fra Sotona (Brother Devil) for his appetite for cruelty and blood. Never
excommunicated from the order, and continued to preach sermons and take
confession while he took part in monstrous cruelty against inmates at
Jasenovac. Captured by Communists after the war, summarily tried and hanged in
his friar's robes.
Jasenovac Survivor on Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic - Excerpt
http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/filipovic/mfm0001.html
A powerful passage from an interview with Jasenovac survivor Dr. Nikola
Nikolic, on concentration camp commandant and priest Fra Miroslav
Filipovic-Majstorovic.
Miroslav Filipovic Majstorovic (WIKIPEDIA)
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miroslav_Filipovic-Majstorovic
"Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic (died 1946), was a former Franciscan friar from
the monastery of Petricevac, who commanded the Jasenovac concentration camp in
Yugoslavia during World War II. A member of the Croatian ultra-nationalist
Ustase, he continued in his role as a member of a religious order, even while
commanding the camp, earning him the epithet Fra Sotona ("Brother Devil") among
the inmates.
A Croatian nationalist and a fascist, he combined religion with his political
ideology. In one instance, in a raid on a Serb Orthodox village in 1942, he
slashed the throat of a child and exclaimed: "Ustasha, this is the way in which
I baptise these bastards in the name of God. You should just follow my example.
Let this thing be on my soul, but I am going to give you my forgiveness and the
forgiveness of the Church for your acts." At his trial for war crimes, he later
admitted to personally killing at least one hundred people, including children,
per day in the camp.
After the war, Filipovic-Majstorovic was tried and tried and sentenced to
death. He was hanged wearing the friar's robes he often wore in the camp, when
giving confession and murdering prisoners."
THE CASE OF ARCHBISHOP STEPINAC - PATRON SAINT OF GENOCIDE
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~velid/cf/cs/psg1.html
The Role of Stepinac - Mass Conversions and Genocide
Cardinal Stepinac and his clerics at one of the
Nazi ceremonies
The Holocaust Revealed - What is Vatican Hiding
http://www.holocaustrevealed.org/_domain/holocaustrevealed.org/Church/Vatican_Hi\
ding.htm
Jasenovac concentration camp
http://www.balkan-archive.org.yu/kosta/jasenovac/jasenovac-INDEX.html
The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, by Vladimir Dedijer
http://www.ahriman.com/en/dedijer.htm
From the editor's preface:
»...in Catholic Croatia, the 'Kingdom of God', everyone who did not belong to
the Catholic faith - for the most part Orthodox Serbs - was compelled to
convert to Catholicism. Those who refused - as well as many who had already
converted - were murdered, usually after prolonged torture in which the order
of the day was the cutting off of noses, ears, or other body parts, or poking
out eyes. Children were cut out of the bodies of pregnant women and
subsequently beheaded; people were chopped to pieces before the eyes of loved
ones, who were even forced to catch the spurting blood in a bowl, etc., to list
only a few horrors as examples. These atrocities assumed such an extent that
even German Nazis, who were not exactly sensitive in such matters, protested.
If this historical fact is little known where we are, another fact completely
escapes our knowledge: the decisive involvement of the Vatican in these
massacres. .«
The way the Croatian side is »burying the ghosts of the past« is tailor-made to
thrill the hearts of the Catholic and the Green faction: the leader of the
Croation regime, Tudjman, has meanwhile had Jasenovac levelled to the ground,
destroyed all documents and declared it a »bird sanctuary«.
JASENOVAC, by CARL SAVICH
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/007.shtml
"The commanders and executioners at the Jasenovac camp, Vjekoslav Maks Luburic,
Ljubo Milos, Ivica Matkovic, Zvonimir Brekalo, Ivica Brkljacic, Saban Mujica, a
Muslim known as 'bloody Mujo', Zvonko Lipovac, were known for their sadistic
brutality and inhumane cruelty. The most noted for his cruelty, however, was
Frater Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, a former Roman Catholic friar, known as
'Brother Devil' (Fra Sotona), who was a commander at the Jasenovac camp from
June to October 1942. Filipovic-Majstorovic was ordained a Roman Catholic
priest in 1939. He was a chaplain in an Ustasha brigade which massacred over
2,200 Serbian civilians in the villages of Drakulic, Motika and Sargovac, near
Banja Luka. Accused of inciting this mass murder of Bosnian Serbs, he was
court-martialled and brought before a German military court. The papal legate
Ramiro Marcone suspended him after the massacres. Through the intervention of
Vjekoslav Luburic, he was brought to JasenovacÝ on June l0, 1942 where he was a
commander until October 1942. From Jasenovac, he went to the Stara Gradiska
camp, where he was a camp commandant until March 20, 1943. During his
four-month command at Jasenovac over 30,000 inmates were murdered.
Filipovic-Majstorovic, tried as a war criminal after the war, admitted that he
oversaw the extermination of at least 30,000 inmates:"
JASENOVAC - THE HISTORICAL LEGACY, by CARL SAVICH
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/008.shtml
CLERO-FASCIST STUDIES PROJECT
http://home.earthlink.net/~velid/cf/
No comment:
Pope John Paul II prays in front of the effigy of Card. Stepinac
inspirer and main ideological supporter of Ustasha movement
and genocide against Jews and Serbs