Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

ing to a Yugoslav government expert on interconfessional relations, ecumenical
cooperation was especially cordial in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 69
However, while this “ecumenism from below” was making progress,
relations between church leaders remained cold. The Serbian Church hierarchy
called for a public apology from Croat leaders of the Catholic Church
for Ustasˇas’ World War II crimes against the Serbian civilian population and
specifically against the Serbian Orthodox Church. Only one Croat churchman
accepted the apology idea. Alfred Pichler, the Catholic bishop of Banja
Luka in Bosnia-Herzegovina, released on 20 December 1963 a Christmas
message that contained the following paragraph:
It was precisely in this country, that, in the past war, many of our brothers
of the Orthodox faith were killed because they were Orthodox Christians.
Those who killed them called themselves Catholics. And those Christians
killed other people, also Christians, because they were not Croats and Catholics.
We painfully admit the terrible self-deceit of those strayed people and
we beg our brothers of the Orthodox faith to forgive us, just as Christ had
forgiven us all from the cross. At the same time, we forgive everyone, if
they perhaps hated us or did us injustice. 70
In contrast to Bishop Pichler, a majority of Croatian clerics voiced countercharges
against the Serbian Orthodox Church for the backing the interwar
regime that discriminated against Catholics and for supporting the Serbian
Četniks who, during World War II, committed massive atrocities against
the Catholic civilian population in Croatia and Bosnia. The Catholics proposed
either mutual apologies or common interfaith prayers for all victims
of World War II (implicitly referring to many victims of the communist
terror, too).
The Serbian Church did not positively respond to the ecumenical initiative
launched by the Second Vatican Council. In 1968, the Serbian Church became
a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, led by
Protestant Christians, of which the Catholic Church was not a member.
Protestant denominations, through the WCC, allocated significant financial
aid to the Serbian Church—otherwise relatively the most impoverished of
all Yugoslav denominations. 71 In addition, antiecumenical theologians in the
Orthodox Church were very influential. In 1974, the archimandrite Justin
Popović published, in Greece, a radical antiecumenical book. 72 In 1975, the
leading Serbian theologian, the archimandrite Atanasije Jevtić, a pupil of
the archimandrite Popović and an admirer of Bishop Velimirović, argued, at
an ecumenical conference, against interfaith prayers. In a similar vein, the
distinguished professor of the Belgrade Orthodox theological school, Dimitrije
Bogdanović, wrote as follows:
I am afraid that the Roman Catholic Church’s strategy of dialogue is but
another way to achieve re-assertion and rejuvenation of Roman Catholi-
the first strife 33