Aloysius Stepinac - Death and Legacy Controversies

Death and Legacy Controversies

In 1953, Stepinac was diagnosed with polycythemia, a rare blood disorder involving the excess of red blood cells, causing him to joke "I am suffering from an excess of reds." On 10 February 1960 at the age of 61, Stepinac died of a thrombosis. Pope John XXIII held a requiem mass for him soon after at St. Peter's Basilica. He was buried in Zagreb during a service in which the protocols appropriate to his senior clerical status were, with Tito's permission, fully observed. Cardinal Franz König was among those who attended the funeral.

Notwithstanding that Stepinac died peacefully at home, he quickly became a martyr in the view of his supporters and many other Catholics. After his death, traces of poison were found in Stepinac's bones, leading many to believe he had been poisoned by his captors.

When in 1943 Stepinac travelled to the Vatican, he came into contact with the Croatian artist Ivan Meštrović. According to Meštrović, Stepinac asked him whether Croatian leader Ante Pavelić knew about crimes being committed in the state. When Meštrović replied that he must know everything, Stepinac reportedly broke into tears. Meštrović did not return to Yugoslavia until 1959 and upon his return met again with Stepinac, who was then under house arrest. Meštrović went on to sculpt a bust of Stepinac after his death which reads: "Archbishop Stepinac was not a man of idle words, but rather, he actively helped every person─when he was able, and to the extent he was able. He made no distinctions as to whether a man in need was a Croat or a Serb, whether he was a Catholic or an Orthodox, whether he was Christian or non-Christian. All the attacks upon him be they the product of misinformation, or the product of a clouded mind, cannot change this fact....".

In 1970, Glas Koncila published a text on Stepinac taken from L'Osservatore Romano which resulted in the edition being confiscated by court decree. Stepinac's beatification process began on October 9, 1981. The Catholic Church declared Stepinac a martyr on November 11, 1997, and on October 3, 1998 Pope John Paul II, while on pilgrimage to Marija Bistrica to beatify Stepinac, declared that Stepinac had indeed been martyred. John Paul had earlier determined that where a candidate for sainthood had been martyred, his/her cause could be advanced without the normal requirement for evidence of a miraculous intercession by the candidate. Accordingly he beatified the late cardinal after saying these words: One of the outstanding figures of the Catholic Church, having endured in his own body and his own spirit the atrocities of the Communist system, is now entrusted to the memory of his fellow countrymen with the radiant badge of martyrdom.

On the other hand many non-Catholics have remained unconvinced about Stepinac's martyrdom and about his saintly qualities in general. The beatification re-ignited old controversies between Catholicism and Communism and between Serbs and Croats. The Jewish community in Croatia, some members of which had been helped by Stepinac during World War II, did not oppose his beatification but the Simon Wiesenthal Center asked for it to be deferred until the wartime conduct of Stepinac had been further investigated. The Vatican had no reaction, though some Croats expressed irritation.

On February 14, 1992, Croatian representative Vladimir Šeks put forth a declaration in the Croatian Sabor condemning the court decision and the process that led to it. The declaration was passed, along with a similar one about the death of Croatian communist official Andrija Hebrang. The declaration states that the true reason of Stepinac's imprisonment was his pointing out many communist crimes and especially refusing to form a Croatian Catholic Church in schism with the Pope. The verdict has not been formally challenged nor overturned in any court between 1997 and 1999 while it was possible under Croatian law. In 1998, the Croatian National Bank released commemoratives 500 kuna gold and 150 kuna silver coins.

In 2007, the municipality of Marija Bistrica began on a project called Stepinac's Path, which would build pilgrimage paths linking places significant to the cardinal: Krašić, Kaptol in Zagreb, Medvednica, Marija Bistrica, and Lepoglava. The Aloysius Stepinac Museum opened in Zagreb in 2007.

Croatian football international Dario Šimić wore a t-shirt with Stepinac's image on it under his jersey during the country's UEFA Euro 2008 game against Poland, which he revealed after the game.