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Yugoslavia Roman Catholicism
The Roman Catholic Church was Yugoslavia's most highly
organized religious community. About 7.5 million Catholics,
mainly Croats, Slovenes, Hungarians, and ethnic Albanians, lived
in Yugoslavia. The church had eight archbishoprics, 13
bishoprics, 2,702 parishes, 182 monasteries, 415 convents, two
schools of theology, and about 4,100 priests, 1,400 monks, and
6,600 nuns. It also published several dozen newspapers and
periodicals whose combined circulation far surpassed that of the
rest of the country's religious press.
The Roman Catholic Church had uneasy relations with
Yugoslavia's Communist regime throughout the postwar period. This
was partly because its hierarchy was loyal to Rome, and partly
because the Catholics supported Croatian nationalism in the early
1970s. Many Yugoslavs retained a strong, emotional association
between Catholicism and the war crimes, forced conversions, and
deportations by the Croatian fascist state in World War II.
Soon after the war, the government's agrarian reform
appropriated church land. Catholic schools were closed, and
formal religious instruction was discouraged. Between 1945 and
1952, many innocent priests were shot or imprisoned in
retribution for wartime atrocities. The arrest and 1946 trial of
Alojzije Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb, led to the low point of
Catholic-Yugoslav relations in 1952. At that point, Tito severed
relations with the Vatican in response to the elevation of the
recently released Stepinac to cardinal. Stepinac, tried for war
crimes, had actually been held guilty of refusing to adapt the
Vatican's stand on social issues such as divorce and education to
conform with the secular requirements of the communist state of
Yugoslavia. Stepinac also had enraged Tito by protesting
arbitrary postwar punishment of Catholic clergy. After
Yugoslavia's break with the Soviet Union in 1948, religious
repression gradually decreased as Tito sought the approval of the
West. The state-approved funeral and burial of Stepinac in 1961
signaled a new modus vivendi between the Yugoslav government and
the Roman Catholic Church of Yugoslavia.
In 1966 Yugoslavia and the Vatican signed a protocol in which
Belgrade pledged to recognize freedom of conscience and Rome's
jurisdiction over ecclesiastical and spiritual matters for
Yugoslav Catholics. In return, the Vatican agreed to honor the
separation of church and state in Yugoslavia, including
prohibition of political activity by clergy. In 1970 Yugoslavia
and the Vatican resumed full diplomatic relations. Nonetheless,
opportunities for conflict remained. Franjo Cardinal Kuraric,
Primate of Croatia, touched off a major controversy in Serbia in
1981 by proposing rehabilitation of Stepinac; subsequent appeals
for canonization of the cardinal met strong Serbian resistance.
Data as of December 1990
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