Will the Catholic Church apologize for the genocide of Serbian Orthodox Christians?

By Ivan Simic

Will the Catholic Church apologize for the genocide of Serbian Orthodox Christians?. 49140.jpeg

The recent decision by the Hague "International" Tribunal to acquit two Croat generals  for their roles in Operation Storm, despite the preponderance of evidence implicating them in the largest single act of ethnic cleansing in Europe since the end of WWII,  as well as the recent acquittal of Albanian Ramush Haradinaj for crimes that included organ trading in Kosovo, finally removed any lingering doubt that this Western-sponsored "tribunal" was a kangaroo court that was established to dictate victor's "justice" by firmly placing all blame on the Yugoslav civil wars on the Serbian people].  Thus, all crimes committed against Serbian civilians are justified on the laws of the jungle. Operation Storm, with US covert aid and outright involvement including retired US generals working for MPRI (violating the US Constitution by placing themselves as mercenaries in the service of a foreign nation), NATO air support and the disruption of Serbian communications helped Croatia (which couldn't do it on her own) complete the century-old dream to rid itself of Serbian Orthodox Christians becoming one of Europe's most ethnically and religiously "pure" banana republics.  

The raped and murdered Serbian grandmothers who were too old to leave their homes, the slaughtered livestock of Serbian peasants and their poisoned wells, the bombings of fleeing refugee columns, the attacked Serbian Orthodox Nuns, the repeat of WWII history, etc. were all justifiable in the eyes of Western leaders who have only heard of alleged crimes committed by Serbians in a civil war but do not care about the crimes committed against Serbian civilians.  The grievances that led the Croatian Serbs, Kosovo Serbs and Bosnian Serbs (comprising one-third of all Yugoslav Serbs who resided outside of Serbia) to resist independence from Yugoslavia beginning in 1991 have never been addressed and will likely never be addressed by Western powers fanatically eager to destroy once highly respected Yugoslavia and the ideals that the multiethnic state, one of the founding members of the UN, once embodied.   It also enables the West to continue its slaughter of Serbian Orthodox Christians that has been ongoing for over 100 years undaunted and without shame.

It is these grievances that were swept under the carpet first by half-Croat/half-Slovene Josip Broz Tito after WWII (who sought "brotherly unity" or "bratsvo jedinstvo" in Yugoslavia) and then by the West, led by Germany and the Vatican in 1992 to prematurely recognize Croatia's illegal independence.  This despite the fears of the once substantial Serbian minority there who witnessed a resurrected fascist state that treated them as third class citizens and rehabilitated all of fascist rhetoric and symbolism of the WWII "Independent" State of Croatia (NDH).  All of the crimes committed in this Western-sanctioned persecution and slaughter of the Serbian people in the recent Yugoslav civil wars were really the final stage of an even more terrible genocide of Serbian Orthodox Christians, Jews and Gypsies in the Nazi-puppet "Independent" State of Croatia (NDH) during WWII which encompassed today's Croatia, Bosnia, and a large swath of Serbia up to Belgrade.  This fanatically primitive and fascist state had as a formal policy (established by Mile Budak) that one third of the Serbs living in its territory would be ethnically cleansed, one third would be converted to Roman Catholicism, and one third would be slaughtered.  In the end, some 500,000 - 1,000,000 Serbians, 70,000 Jews, and 20,000 Gypsies (including over 100,000 children) perished in this medieval fascist puppet state and some 200,000 Serbian Orthodox Christians were forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism in the space of four short years (1941-1945).  

Even the Nazis and fascist Italians were appalled by the sheer scale and brutality of the crimes committed by the Croatian Ustashe and other indigenous fascist groups (such as the Bosnian Muslim Handzars and Kosovo Albanians) which to this date have largely not been acknowledged, prosecuted, or compensated for, and which have prevented any reconciliation.  What is even less publicized is the role of the Catholic Church in aiding and promoting the slaughter of Orthodox Christians which continues to this day and which will forever drive a wedge between Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism.  Many books such as Magnum Crimen (Enormous Crime) and The Vatican's Holocaust have detailed the role of the Catholic Church and Mussolini in supporting the Croatian Ustashe in its infancy in the 1930's and then installing this terrorist organization to rule the NDH (under Nazi supervision).   Croatian Catholic clergy actively participated in and helped organize mass orgies of sadistic violence and evil heresy as some even had competitions to see how many Serbian throats could be slit with one knife - the record being some 1360 in one evening.  Serbians were murdered right in their Orthodox Churches (e.g. in Glina) and thousands of Serbs were converted en masse to Catholicism only to be slaughtered immediately afterward. 

Though Western propaganda in the 1990's claimed that this genocide was ancient history (try telling that to the Jews who suffered with the Serbs), this unresolved, unrepentant and unabated genocide of Serbian Orthodox Christians remains as the greatest problem in the Balkans and now it is obvious, given NATO's illegal and vicious war on the Serbs in 1999, it had the support of a large fraction of European leaders as Europe (led by a newly reunified, unrepentant, aggressive, and imperialistic Germany) which appears to be desperately rehabilitating fascism along with US leaders such as Bill and Hillary Clinton both of whom have completely lost their moral compasses and needed a quick excuse to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky "frosted dress" scandal.   

Croatia's Catholic Archbishop during WWII, Alojzije Stepinac was convicted as a war criminal in Tito's Yugoslavia but has been revered as an anti-Communist "hero" and even "martyr" in Croatia and has even been shockingly beatified as a "Saint" by the Catholic Church.   At the very least, this purported "man of God" did absolutely nothing to speak out against and stop the genocide and forced mass conversions of Serbian Orthodox Christians in the NDH during WWII.  At the worst, he aided and abetted one of the most evil and primitive puppet regimes in history that was created with one sole aim of wiping out Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.  In fact, to have the astonishing number of Croatian Catholic priests who were also Croatian Ustashe commit the untold thousands upon thousands of murders of Serbian Orthodox Christians as occurred throughout the NDH and NOT know about it would be simply illogical and ridiculous. 

No, Stepinac was very aware of the slaughters of Serbs and did nothing to prevent them despite the "moral" authority that he would have had as Croatia's leading Catholic leader to at least temper them.  To demonstrate the level of astonishing Western ignorance about "Archbishop" Stepinac, there is even a school in White Plaines, NY named after this man who oversaw one of the worst genocides in human history. 

The ratlines established by the Vatican to help Croatian clergy and other Ustashe leaders escape Tito's Yugoslavia have been well documented but the Vatican has received sparse condemnation for its efforts to save fascists from justice.  The truth was hastily suppressed as the fascist enemies of yesterday made way for new communist enemies of post-WWII Europe and it is difficult to criticize the only religion to have its own UN seat and which is one of the world's largest corporations thus, the Vatican has been barely condemned for its actions against Orthodox Christians.

Today, there is renewed interest in false ecumenism not in the interest of restoring the true Christianity that Jesus Christ taught us but in the interest of control ultimately turning Christianity upside down and destroying it.   

In the words of my friend, John Ranz, President of the Buchenwald Holocaust Survivors and my friend, Croatia was never de-Nazified.  {It now appears that neither was the West.}  This explains why today, Croatian streets and statues have been named after Mile Budak and other fascist Croatian "heroes",signsarecommonlyhung on freeway overpasses "welcoming" Serbian sports teams with slogans like "Srbe na Vrbe" ("Serbs on willows," i.e. "hang all Serbs), immature and poor-quality Croatian "rock" groups like Thomson openly sing lyrics praising the genocide of Serbs, and many other outrages occur daily that should never be allowed in any modern and civilized society. But this is Europe - self-styled "civilized" Europe - which created the sick notion of the "white man's burden" as an excuse/justification for colonialism and this is in Croatia where the Nazis still have a stranglehold preventing the country from moving into the 21^st century.  Collectively, this demonstrates that Croatia, just as Germany, has yet to come to terms with its horrible past.  "Holier than thou" Western hypocrite leaders allow this because they view the Serbs as subhuman who need to be punished for their crucial role in defeating the Nazis during WWII and the Axis during WWI.  This is Germany's anti-Christian revenge and America, who fought the Nazis a mere 70 years ago is allowing it happen betraying Her WWI and WWII ally to Her eternal shame.  Just as the Jews were a scapegoat for everything evil, the Serbs have taken their place because of vile and anti-Christian Western hatred and jealousy of Orthodoxy Christianity.  And Cain has slain Abel once again.   

It is this backdrop of the horrible genocide of Serbian Orthodox Christians that must be understood if we are to ever reconcile Croatians and Serbians and bring lasting stability to the Balkans.  This genocide that was second only to the Jews in proportional loss of population (the Russians, of course, lost the most people over all - some 25 million in the genocide against them).  I lost over 100 members of my distant family to this horribly racist, fascist evil that overtook Croatia and Bosnia over 70 years ago.  Every Serb has a similar story to that of my family.  This just won't be forgotten no matter how much Western "leaders" and their servile, corporate-controlled pseudo-intellectual mainstream media choose to ignore and censor this story, lie, and sanitize/rewrite history. 

As there will likely never be reconciliation between the Serbs and Croats on their own terms given the amazing gulf of propaganda, misunderstanding and hatred that exists between these genetically-related people who sadly reside in the faultline between Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Western Roman Catholicism, and given the "divide and conquer" efforts made by the West which has tried to prevent reconciliation, I beseech the millions of good Catholics the world over to learn more about this horrible and highly suppressed genocide that was committed in the name of Catholicism.  I also ask Catholics to encourage their leaders to accept responsibility, apologize for, compensate the victims, and open up the Vatican archives so that this crime may never again be repeated in the name of religious fanaticism and heresy so that we may finally put this tragic issue to rest.  The indescribable horror of the genocide that occurred inside the "Independent" State of Croatia must be exposed so that we can all understand the bestial and evil savagery that lost and misguided human beings can inflict on another. 

The truth will ultimately set humanity free because it is God's intention and it is the deliberate suppression of the truth by Western powers and the Catholic Church that prevents resolution of this problem.  It is the Devil that hides in darkness and distorts and suppresses the truth.   It's high time for the barbaric viciousness of savage Western anti-Christian actions against the Orthodox East to be exposed (including, e.g. the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by Western Crusaders).  We must root out anti-Christian hatred to heal.

Perhaps, then, there might be a glimmer of hope to truly resolve the horrible Schism of 1054 that opened over 950 years ago when the Catholic Church broke away from the Orthodox Church and from which it has been deviating further and further ever since as Cain continues mercilessly slaying Abel. 

Ivan Simic