Saint Stepinac?

It's considered rude to say mean things about the ailing, but with the Pope in the news, I thought I would bring up the case of Alojzije Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb during the second world war and, according to the current pontiff, not just an all-around good guy, but actually a saint which, one supposes, is supposed to be a pretty high standard for goodness. For much of Stepinac's tenure, Croatia was ruled by the Ustase, a quisling organization whose brutality against Orthodox Christians and Jews got so out of hand at times that the government of Nazi Germany felt compelled to try and restrain their conduct at times. Since the main social cleavage between Croats and other inhabitants of what was, at the time, Yugoslavia is religious (Serbo-Croatian speaking Catholics are Croatians, Serbo-Croatian speaking Orthodox Christians are Serbs, and Serbo-Croation speaking Muslims are just Bosnian Muslims) the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Croatia wound up deeply involved in the whole thing.

For example:

Ustaše held the Eastern Orthodoxy as their greatest foe. In fact, they never once recognized the existence of a Serb people on the territories of Croatia or Bosnia — they only recognized "Croats of the Eastern faith". Catholic priests among the Ustaše were carrying out forced conversions of Serbs to Catholicism throughout Croatia.

Some priests, mostly Franciscans, particularly in, but not limited to, Herzegovina and Bosnia, took part in the atrocities themselves. Miroslav Filipović, a Franciscan friar, was the most prominent of them. He used the Petrićevac monastery as a base for the Ustaše, and on February 6, 1942, led the Ustaše in a brutal massacre of 2730 Serbs of the nearby villages, including 500 children. The same Filipović later became Chief Guard of Jasenovac concentration camp where he was nicknamed "Fra Sotona".

You can read more about Father Filipovic here if you're so inclined ("At his later trial for war crimes, he admitted to a personal daily kill tally of at least one hundred people, including children.") After the war, Ante Pavelic, the head of the Ustase state, made his way to Italy where he lived under the protection of the Catholic Church in San Girolamo monastery. San Girolamo was the base of operations for Father Krunoslav Draganovic who "With protection of college head Monsignor Juraj Magjerec and Pope Pius XII, turned San Girolamo into waystation and hiding place for fugitive Ustase," and ran an operation known as the "Ratline" which was charged with spiriting Ustase war criminals, including many priests, away to safety in South America. Needless to say, given the Catholic Church as a whole's generally soft-on-fascism attitudes, and the specifically deep involvement of Croatia's rank-and-file clergy in the dirty business of dictatorship and massacre, Archbishop Stepinac was involved as well:

Despite advising clergy to steer clear of politics, on April 12, 1941 paid a visit of his own accord to Slavko Kvaternik, and on April 16 to poglavnik Ante Pavelic to give NDH and Ustase regime his personal endorsement. Also broadcast his support for the NDH in a radio address to the Croatian people, all of which occured before the Royal Yugoslav Army capitulated. Informed by letter by Bishop Alojzije Misic of Mostar of the ghastly massacres undertaken by the Ustase against local Serbs and Jews, but merely passed on the letter to Pavelic. Vigorously defended the Ustase to Pope Pius XII and the Vatican secretary of state during visits in 1942 and 1943. Catholic newspapers during the war kept to official guidelines and published appalling attacks on Jews and Serbs and effluviant praise of the poglavnik and the Ustase. As head of the Croatian Catholic Church was in charge of the mass conversion of Serbs to Catholicism and the adoption of Serb children orphaned by the Ustase massacres by Croatian, Catholic families, and certainly equated Orthodoxy with heresy.

Now to be fair, Archbishop Stepinac tried to help out Jews on occassion:

According to solidly based data he saved several hundred Jews during the WW2: either by direct action, or by secret rescripts to the clergymen, including mixed marriages, conversion to Catholicism, as did some Righteous in other European countries (in Greece for instance).

That was kind of him. Indeed, like a majority of Catholic clergy during the period, Archbishop Stepinac stood resolutely against the specifically racialist element of Nazi politics. Jews who had converted to Catholicism should not, according to this view, be killed. A forced conversion now and again, however, was another matter. And Stepinac doesn't seem to have been unduly troubled by the (locally) larger practice of massacring Orthodox Christians (or subjecting them to forced conversions). Certainly the larger geopolitical implications of taking the Nazi side in the war seem, to him, to have been a small matter compared to the vital necessity of crushing Serbian power. According to one account of the balance:

Defenders allege he protected some Jews from falling into the hands of the Ustase and Gestapo, that he spoke privately of his displeasure to Pavelic and other Ustase leaders, refraining from speaking publicly for fear that the church would lose its influence altogether. Critics argue that after German and Italian attempts to rein in the Ustase failed, the Church was the only organ which could arrest the state terror of Pavelic, Budak, and Co, who considered themselves devout Catholics. Spoke out vehemently against Communism before Communists had even taken power, fully exhonerating the clergy of complicity in war crimes and atrocities in the NDH.

Now I think a reaonable dispute can be had as to whether Stepinac was a moral monster like Pavelic or merely a weak, self-interested man. Clearly, if he wanted to maintain his power and privileges as Archbishop, he couldn't really afford to take a strong stand against the Ustashe. And if he went a bit further than was strictly necessary in terms of collaborating with them, well, nationalism and a desire to be close to centers of power are very common human failings. One can't know for sure, and the evidence as to whether Stepinac approved in his heart of Ustashe crimes, or merely felt that allying with Nazism was the only pragmatic thing to do in light of the threat posed by Communism and Orthodox Christianity (after all, we don't think Winston Churchill approved of Stalinism merely for having allied with Stalin).

At any rate, these ordinary sorts of defenses of Catholic conduct during World War Two have always struck me as extraordinarily weak. It's common, of course, for people to do less than they might in order to prevent the suffering of others. It's common to go along, get along with the powerful and collaborate with them. But this was, you will recall, the largest war ever fought. Millions and millions of people found it within themselves to put their lives on the line fighting against Nazism. Cardinal Stepinac, like many of his colleagues in the Croatian Church, were not willing to do that (though Stepinac later demonstrating a willingness to put his life on the line to fight Communism). Nor did they stay neutral. Insofar as they took sides, they chose to side with the pro-Nazi forces, and when the war was done acted to prevent them from seeing justice. It seems to me that it's debatable whether or not you ought to consider the man a war criminal. Whether you should consider him a saint is not, I think, a matter about which reasonable people can disagree. But the saint-happy Pope acting in, frankly, the best traditions of the institution he heads, thinks the man is a saint.