Priests Helping Fascists
A new report by the State Department says Catholic priests in Rome helped
Croatian leaders, who sent up to 700,000 Serbs, Jews and others to death
camps, to hide in Italy after the war and eventually flee to South America.
The report, which focuses on how Nazi gold was shipped through neutral
countries to finance the German war effort, points out that much of its
information, from British and American intelligence files, could not be
confirmed.
''There is no evidence in U.S. archives that the Vatican leadership knew
of or gave support to the Ustasha activities outside its walls,'' the report
says. ''But given the location of the college, troubling questions remain.'' The report added that the college ''appeared to operate with at least the
tacit acquiescence of some Vatican officials'' as ''it helped fugitive
Croatian war criminals escape to the Western Hemisphere in the early postwar
years.''
The writers of the report urge the Vatican to make available all its
relevant archives.
A spokesman for the Vatican, Joaquin Navarro-Vals, today denied any
Vatican knowledge of the underground effort to help Ustasha leaders and said
the Vatican had no control over the college.
''The only control from the Holy See is intellectual control, making sure
the college is teaching according to Catholic dogma,'' Mr. Navarro-Vals
said. ''We don't think they were involved in such activities, but we do not
have any records or control over these institutions.''
He described the State Department's reference to ''troubling questions''
about the Vatican as gratuitous assumptions.
This is not the first time that the Vatican has been accused of aiding
the Croatian fascists. Last year the producers of a documentary for the A
& E cable television network released a United States Treasury
Department memo from 1946 that reported that the Vatican still held 200
million Swiss francs, $170 million today, for Croatian fascists for
safekeeping. The Vatican vehemently denied the charge.
The State Department report does not address that sum of money or suggest
that the Vatican treasury was part of network of Swiss and other European
banks where the Nazis stored plundered gold and money.
The report points out how American and British intelligence services,
preoccupied with the cold war, also colluded in helping Croatian fascists
escape Soviet-occupied territory in the late 1940's and 50's and made no
real effort to capture the Croatian fascist leader, Ante Pavelic, when he
was hiding in Italy.
The 200-page document, which is careful not to accuse directly the
Vatican leadership of direct knowledge or involvement, is most unlikely to
unleash a major scandal at the Holy See. But it has revived demands by
historians and Jewish groups that the Vatican reveal more secrets.
Mr. Navarro-Vals said that in 1975 the Vatican released all relevant
information about the church's activities in the war in 11 volumes of
documents covering 1939 to 1945. But it was the Vatican that decided what
papers to release.
But the report says it is quite likely that the Vatican was aware of
the efforts by priests at the San Girolamo Croatian College in Rome to help
the Ustasha, as the Croatian fascist rulers were known.
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