There was an item on the RTE Nine O'Clock News a couple of weeks back about the Vatican's sort-of apology for the failure of Pope Pius XII forthrightly to condemn the crimes of the Nazis. The programme which followed was the second part of John Bowman's documentary on the life and times of the late Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid.
The documentary re-told the tale of the Ireland-Yugoslavia football friendly at Dalymount Park in October 1955. McQuaid had wanted the match cancelled in protest against the persecution of Catholics in Yugoslavia. But the FAI stood firm, and the fixture went ahead.
It struck me as strange that Mr. Bowman made no mention of one relevant aspect of the affair, to do with Vatican attitudes to the crimes of the Nazis.
Catholic commentators have developed a consistent line of defence for Pius XII to the charges of silent collusion with the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities. Despite the vast resources of the Church, they say, Pius wasn't aware of the full horror unfolding. And insofar as he was aware, the fact that he didn't complain publicly didn't mean he did nothing.
If he'd shouted from the rooftops he'd have put bishops, priests and Catholic laity in Nazi areas at risk, without achieving anything worthwhile. When it was possible and appropriate to intervene discreetly, he did so. On occasion, he succeeded in staying the Nazis' hand, and saved lives.
Some of this may be true. But it shrinks to insignificance when placed alongside the things which are certainly true.
In his documentary, Mr. Bowman suggested that McQuaid had wanted the Dalymount game cancelled as a protest against the mistreatment of Catholics in Yugoslavia. (The documentary made the astounding observation that "in fairness" this might be seen as the moral equivalent of the sports boycott of apartheid South Africa.)
In fact, McQuaid's intervention was part of a Vatican campaign in support of the Croatian archbishop, Alojziji Stepinac. Mr. Bowman and his team of researchers missed this entirely. Very odd, to say the least of it.
The background was this: in 1941 a Croatian Nazi movement, the Ustashe, led by one Ante Pavelic, had seized power and declared independence. It is doubtful whether, at the outset, or ever, Pavelic had the majority support of the Croatian people. But he was able to crush all "internal" opposition, not least because Croatia was overwhelmingly Catholic and the Catholic bishops backed the Ustashe to the hilt.
Stepinac, bishop of Zagreb, led his priests and tens of thousands of laity in a solemn procession through the streets to his cathedral to give thanks for the Ustashe triumph. From his pulpit, he proclaimed support for Pavelic's plan to make the country "100 percent Catholic in ten years".
Catholic priests and monks accompanied Ustashe forces as they scoured the towns and countryside for Serbs. Members of the Orthodox Church were rounded up. Some were killed on the spot, others allowed to choose between conversion to Catholicism and conveyance to a concentration camp. Orthodox priests were publicly executed so as to encourage their congregations to capitulate. At least 200 priests perished in this way. Estimates of the numbers of Serbian civilians to die range from 150,000 to 250,000.
After the war, the Orthodox patriarch, Dr. Gavrilo, emerged from Dachau, barely alive but with enough spirit immediately to denounce the Catholic Church in Croatia for its role in the slaughter, and the Vatican for failing to speak out.
Stepinac was charged with collaboration, although "charged" is hardly the word. It's the equivalent of charging Ian Paisley with Protestantism. Stepinac had publicLy and explicitly endorsed Nazism, thanking god for sending Hitler to lead Europe and specifically endorsing the project for "cleansing" (his word) Croatia. (It's worth keeping some of this in mind when watching news items from the former Yugoslavia.)
Stepinac was jailed, then released in 1952 on condition that he remain in his home town of Fracic. Many might regard this as an offensively inadequate penalty. But not the Vatican, which launched a huge international campaign to "Free Archbishop Stepinach". The campaign was conducted with particular fervour in Ireland. McQuaid's attempted fatwah against footballers was an example.
In the following year, 1956, Pius XII showed Serbians what he thought of the genocide against them by making Stepinac a cardinal.
Whatever the state of the Vatican's wartime knowledge, whatever the constraints then on its freedom of action and speech, there was no excuse in the 1950s. The unspeakable evil of Nazism, its record of genocide in Croatia as elsewhere, was open to inspection by all who were minded to look and learn.
The Vatican didn't want to know, because in large measure it knew already.
One of the reasons these things are not more widely known in a country like Ireland where there is considerable interest in the role and record of the Catholic Church is that television documentary makers, for example, when they encounter such awkward truths, find it convenient to avert their eyes and pass on. n