Aloysius Stepinac - Pre-war Coadjutor and Archbishop of Zagreb

Pre-war Coadjutor and Archbishop of Zagreb

He was appointed coadjutor to the see of Zagreb in 1934, after other candidates had been rejected by Pope Pius XI because king Alexander I of Yugoslavia needed to agree with the appointment. Upon his naming, he took In te, Domine, speravi (O Lord, in Thee have I trusted) as his motto. During this period, King Alexander ran a dictatorship in the country. Stepinac was among those who signed the Zagreb memorandum demanding from the king the release of Vladko Maček and other Croatian politicians, as well as a general amnesty. Stepinac was denied access by Yugoslav authorities to see Maček to thank him for his well-wishes concerning Stepinac's appointment as coadjutor.

King Alexander was assassinated in Marseilles in 1934, and Stepinac along with Bishops Antun Akšamović, Dionizije Njaradi and Gregorij Rožman were given special permission from the Holy See to attend the funeral in an Orthodox church. Croatian politician Ante Trumbić spoke to Stepinac on several occasions in 1934. On his relation with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he recorded that Stepinac has "loyalty to the state as it is, but with the condition that the state acts towards the Catholic Church as it does to all just denominations and that it guarantees them freedom". On July 30 he received French deputy Robert Schuman, whom he told: "There is no justice in Yugoslavia. The Catholic Church endures much".

In 1936, he climbed the Mount Triglav, the tallest peak in Yugoslavia. In 2006 this climb was commemorated by a memorial chapel being built near the summit. In 1937 he led a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (then the British Mandate of Palestine). During the pilgrimage he blessed an altar dedicated to the martyr Nikola Tavelić (who was beatified then, but later canonized).

On December 7, 1937 Archbishop Anton Bauer died, and though still below the age of forty, Stepinac succeeded him as the Archbishop of Zagreb. During Lent in 1938, Stepinac told a group of students from the University of Zagreb: "Love towards one's own nation cannot turn a man into a wild animal, which destroys everything and calls for reprisal, but it must ennoble him, so that his own nation secures respect and love for other nations." In 1938, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia held its last election before the outbreak of World War II. Stepinac voted for Vlatko Maček's opposition list, while Radio Belgrade spread the false information that he had voted for Milan Stojadinović's Yugoslav Radical Union. In the latter half of 1938, Stepinac had an operation for acute appendicitis.

In response to growing tensions in Europe, in 1936 Stepinac helped sponsor a committee aiding Jewish refuges from Austria and Germany. Then in April 1939 Dr. Dragutin Hren spoke to Stepinac about a group of Croatian Discalced Carmelite nuns from Mayerling who were being pressured by the German Nazis. Stepinac decided to accept the group and place them at a mansion in Brezovica. Stepinac spent October 6, 1939 in Ivanić-Grad where he administered confirmation for the local parish. In 1940, he received Prince Paul at St. Mark's Church as the prince arrived in Zagreb to curry support for the Cvetković-Maček Agreement. Under Stepinac, Pope Pius XII declared 1940 as a Jubilee year for Croats to celebrate 1300 years of Christianity among the Croats. In 1940, the Franciscan Order celebrated 700 years in Croatia and the order's minister general Leonardo Bello came to Zagreb for the event. During his visit Stepinac joined the Franciscan Third Order, on September 29, 1940.