Ivan Šarić

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Not to be confused with Ivan Sarić.
Archbishop Ivan Šarić and Ante Pavelić in Sarajevo
Archbishop Ivan Šarić and Ante Pavelić in Sarajevo

Ivan Šarić (1871-1960) was a Roman Catholic priest who became the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vrhbosna (Sarajevo) in 1922. He was a benefactor to the Bosnian Croats who became a controversial figure because of his pro-Ustaše activities and rhetoric during World War II.

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[edit] Early life and career

Ivan Šarić was born to a Croatian family near Travnik on September 27 1871. He attended high school in Travnik from 1882 to 1890, entered the seminary in Travnik, and completed his studies in Sarajevo in 1894. He was made a priest in the Vrhbosna Archbishopric on July 22, 1894.

He worked as a catechist at the Institute of St. Vinko in Sarajevo from 1894. In 1896 he became a canon of Vrhbosna. Between 1896 and 1908 he edited the Vrhbosna newspaper, and, for a time, Balkan newspaper. In 1898 the Seminary Faculty in Zagreb awarded him a doctorate. On June 27, 1908 Šarić was named the bishop-coadjutor of Vrhbosna and the titular bishop Caesaropolitanus. On May 2, 1922 he was made the archbishop and metropolitan of Vrhbosna.

Šarić was a pioneer of Catholic Action (a project of Pope Pius XI for the inclusion of laiety in the hierarchical apostolate of the Church), and took particular interest in the Catholic press. In 1922 he started and for a time edited the weekly Nedjelja ('Sunday'), which was banned by the authorities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, then renamed Križ ('The Cross') and finally renamed Katolički Tjednik ('Catholic Weekly'). He also printed the Vrhbosanske savremene knjižice, small books about the contemporary affairs of the archbishopric, a total of 55 issues up to 1941. He wrote twenty other assorted printed works.

Archbishop Šarić invested much effort into the financing of the two seminaries, and encouraged the work of Caritas and missionary activities. He attempted to attract new male orders into the diocese (the Franciscans were already there). He took much interest in the national activities of the Bosnian Croats, and he helped the Croatian cultural society Napredak.

[edit] War time collaboration and the Ustaše

Šarić was the archbishop of Sarajevo during World War II, when Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of the Independent State of Croatia. Saric used the Catholic newspapers of the Sarajevo diocese he headed as an outlet for his political musings as well as his amateur poetry. He expressed goodwill and enthusiasm towards the new Ustaše leadership of Ante Pavelić in the early months of 1941. This piece appeared a month after the Ustaše took power:

"I was with our Ustaše in North and South America. The bishops there, Americans, Germans, Irish, Slovaks and Spaniards, with whom I came into contact, all praised the Croat Ustaše as good, self-sacrificing believers, as godly and patriotic people... How many times have I heard the Ustaše ask where they would be without their priests!
...I sang with the Ustaše with all my heart and voice the song 'Our Beautiful Homeland', all with big tears in our eyes. And with eager hope in its beautiful, its sweet and its golden freedom, lifting ourselves upwards to God, we prayed to the Almighty to guide and protect Ante Pavelić for the liberation of Croatia. The good God heard and, behold, he answered our cries and supplications" [1].

At Christmas 1941 he penned a eulogy to Pavelić, Kada Sunca Sija ('When the Sun Shines') and had it published by his own diocesan press. It included these lines:

For God himself was at thy side, thou good and strong one,
So that thou mightest perform thy deeds for the Homeland...
And against the Jews, who had all the money,
Who wanted to sell our souls...the miserable traitors...
Dr Ante Pavelić! The dear name!
Croatia has therein a treasure from Heaven.

And more in similar vein [2].

Šarić's own paper also published these words by one Pitar Pajić:

"Until now God spoke through papal encyclicals, sermons, the Christian press ... And they were deaf. Now God has decided to use other methods. He will prepare missions! World missions! They will be upheld not by priests but by army commanders led by Hitler. The sermons will be heard with the help of cannon, machine guns, tanks and bombers." [3]

Šarić publicly supported the forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs to Roman Catholicism. In his book The Balkans in Our Time [4] Professor Robert Lee Wolff referred to Ustaše gangs killing tens of thousands of Serbs, and wrote:

"To some they offered the choice between conversion from Orthodoxy to Catholicism or instant death.... It must be recorded as a historic fact that certain members of the Croatian hierarchy, notably Archbishop Sharich [sic] of Sarajevo, endorsed this butchery".

According to French writer Jean Hussard, who witnessed the four years of Ustaše governance, Šarić not only knew about but also encouraged the persecution of Serbs [5]. The bishop became known among his enemies as The Hangman of the Serbs.

He was the mentor of Krunoslav Draganović, the organizer of ratlines, and the United States Department of State considered him "perhaps the most rabid opponent of the Orthodox Serbs and the Yugoslav Royal family"[citation needed]. Another one of his subordinates was Franjo Kralik, who published anti-Semitic and anti-Serb hate speech in the Katolički Tjednik under Šarić [6].

[edit] Post-war life

After the war, in 1945, he answered to no war crime charges as he fled abroad. Šarić and leading Nazi collaborator Gregorij Rožman, Bishop of Ljubljana, were reported by the CIA to be living together at the Bishop’s Palace at Klagenfurt, Austria, in October 1946 [7]. After spending a period of time with Rožman [8], Šarić then moved to Madrid, Spain with the assistance of the Roman Catholic Church. There he made a new translation of the New Testament into Croatian, and published a book extolling the virtues of Pope Pius XII.
He died in Madrid on July 6 1960; his body is now buried in the Church of St. Joseph in Sarajevo.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jasenovac - Donja Gradina: Industry of Death 1941-45
  2. ^ Diocesan magazine of Križevtsi, No 2 [1942] pp 10-11
  3. ^ Katolički Tjednik, August 31, 1941
  4. ^ Cambridge, Mass., 1956, p.205
  5. ^ Vu en Yougoslavie 1939-1944, Lausanne, ed. du Haut Pays, Maurice Blanc, 1944, p. 212
  6. ^ 'Love Has Its Limits' is a piece often attributed to Archbishop Ivan Šarić, but it was actually written by one of his intimates, Father Franjo Kralik, in one of Šarić's Sarajevo diocesan newspapers. It was part of a campaign to explain to the masses why the Jews around them were being "disappeared":
    "The descendants of those who hated Jesus, who condemned him to death, who crucified him and immediately persecuted his disciples, are guilty of greater excesses than those of their forefathers. Greed is growing. The Jews who led Europe and the entire world to disaster - morally, culturally and economically - developed an appetite which nothing less than the world as a whole could satisfy...
    Love has its limits. The movement for freeing the world from Jews is a movement for the renaissance of human dignity. The all-wise and Almighty God is behind this movement. See http://www.jasenovac-info.com/cd/biblioteka/pavelicpapers/saric/is0003.html
  7. ^ Jasenovac - Donja Gradina: Industry of Death 1941-45
  8. ^ "A short time later Rožman duly arrived in Berne, accompanied by Bishop Ivan Šarić, the ‘hangman’ of Sarajevo. By the end of May 1948, Rožman had apparently carried out this money laundering operation for the Ustashi, for he visited the U.S. Consulate in Zurich and was given a ‘non-quota immigration visa as a minister of religion'".
    Unholy Trinity - The Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss Banks by John Loftus and Mark Aarons 1998, St. Martin's Press ISBN:031218199x.; pp. 132-133.
    See also http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2005/11/ftr-532-interview-with-john-loftus.html