Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

mjanić created in 1639 the first Croatian orthography; the Franciscan Andrija
Kačić-Miosˇić wrote poetry in vernacular in 1756; and the remarkable
Franciscan monk-priests were guardians of Croat ethnic communities in
Bosnia-Herzegovina under Ottoman rule; anti-Turkish fighters such priest
Marko Mesić and Luka Ibrisˇimović nineteenth-century patriotic clerics such
as Strossmayer, Dobrila, and Pavlinović, who defended Croatian identity and
championed South Sea Unity, and so on. Finally, as Serbs honor their shrines
in Serbia, Kosovo, and Macedonia, the Croats take pride in monuments and
artifacts from the era of Croatian native rulers located in Dalmatia around
ancent cities such as Solin, Nin, and Knin. 42 The founders of Croatian archeology
were Catholic priests and scholars such as Lujo Marun and Frane
Bulić, who carried out excavations not only in old Croatia but also in areas
later populated by Serb Orthodox settlers. 43
Croatian nationalistic movements in the nineteenth century urged the
Holy See to appoint more native Croat church leaders as well as native saints
and blessed martyrs. The popes were generally receptive to this, and the
numbers of ethnic Croat bishops had steadily risen, but the Croats, in contrast
to other Catholic nations of Europe, had to wait much longer for their
native saints. The first blessed martyr of Croat ethnic background (Bishop
Augustin Kazˇotić, 1260–1323) was beatified in 1702. The first native Croat
saint of the Roman Catholic Church came as late as 1970. At that time, for
example, the Roman Catholic Church in Poland had commemorated 249
saints and blessed martyrs, all ethnic Poles and Polish Catholics, including
108 saints and saintly candidates martyred during World War II by German
invaders. 44 The rival neighboring Orthodox Church of Serbia then worshiped
60 saints, all ethnic Serbs. 45 In order to mitigate the Croatian frustration
over the lack of native saints (while both rival Orthodox Serbs and Western
Catholic nations worshiped numerous saints of their own), Pope Paul VI
changed several centuries-old regulations for the canonization of saints. As
a result in 1970 the Dalmatian Franciscan missionary and crusader Nikola
Tavelić (1340–91) was canonized in Rome. Croatian clergy put pressure on
the popes for more native saints. Between 1970 and 1998 the so-called
Church in the Croat People (Crkva u Hrvata), as it came to be referred to
by church leaders and church press, had acquired three saints of Croat
ethnic background, two more blessed martyrs, and four “servants of God”
(future sainthood candidates). The Slavic pope John Paul II awarded to the
Croats two saints, one blessed martyr, and three cardinals. Croatian Catholicism,
unofficially calling itself the Church in the Croat People, experienced
an unprecedented growth and success during late communism and
in postcommunism. Croatian Catholicism attained its largest size in history
in communist Yugoslavia between the 1960s and 1980s. Most of the bishops,
including the chairman and vice-chairman of the Conference of Bishops of
Yugoslavia (BKJ) were ethnic Croats. Three metropolitan-archbishops were
based in Croatia and one in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Church maintained
seminaries, theological schools, colleges, publishing houses, and so forth. In
10 balkan idols