Representatives of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have agreed to disagree on the legacy of controversial wartime cardinal – seen as a criminal by Orthodox Serbs, and a saint by Catholic Croats.
Aloysius Viktor Stepinac has been the subject of a joint commission of Catholic and Orthodox leaders, debating the cardinal's cause for canonisation. At the close of the group's final meeting, a joint statement was released. It said:
'It has come to the conclusion that various events, speeches, writings, silences, and views are still subject to different interpretations. In the case of Cardinal Stepinac, the interpretations that were predominantly given by Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs remain divergent,' it said, according to Catholic News Agency.
The Catholic Church has sought the canonisation of Stepinac, while many in the Orthodox Church consider him a criminal who collaborated with the far-right Ustashe regime in the wartime Balkans.
The statement added that it was grateful for the conciliatory nature of the discussions, that allowed 'full freedom of expression'.
But why is the cardinal's legacy so hotly contested?
Stepinac was Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death in 1960 at the age of 61, and witnessed the pro-Nazi Utashe regime take power in Croatia during the war.
Catholics highlight his record of resistance to the regime, led by Ante Pavelic. 'Stepinac's sermons against the Ustashe were so strong. They [Soviet agents] prohibited them from being published, because they were so strong against the Ustashe,' said Catholic lawyer and jurist Prof Ronald J Rychlak.
Stepinac condemned the destruction of Zagreb's main synagogue in 1941 and challenged the racist ideology of the Utashe. He also stood up against the regime's genocidal atrocities committed against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.
However, in 1946 Stepinac was put on trial by the new Communist government, accused of working with the Fascist regime. His opponents said he was a Nazi sympathiser, highlighting that he supported the Ustashe regime when it first came to Croatia. He faced accusations of continued relations with the Ustashe, and of supporting forced conversions, at gunpoint, of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism.
He was given limited representation and faced a system critics say was biased against him, and was found guilty of high treason and war crimes.
Stepinac died in 1960 while under house arrest, from an illness it's believed he contracted from poor prison conditions – with some Vatican studies suggesting he was poisoned. He was beatified as a martyr by the Catholic Church in 1998.
Though it remains conflicted, the bilateral commission concluded that it had helped to 'illustrate the life and ministry of an important Catholic pastor during a particularly troubling period of history'. It has granted the responsibility of Stepinac's cause to Pope Francis, who created the commission in May 2016 in response to Orthodox opposition to the canonisation.
The statement added: 'The study of Cardinal Stepinac's life has taught that, throughout history, all Churches cruelly suffered different persecutions and have their martyrs and confessors of the faith.
'In this regard, the members of the commission agreed on the possibility of a future collaboration in a common work to share the memory of martyrs and confessors of both Churches.'
