Many centuries ago the Vatican became aware that the Orthodox Slavic nations stood in its way of achieving supremacy over world Christianity. This entailed not only the most insidious Jesuit intrigues of Papists but also an overt policy of annihilation of Orthodox Slavs.
Despite an active expansion of Papism and Uniatism and the events of not just the 15th to 17th centuries but also of actual life in the 20th century in Catholic Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, in the longsuffering lands of Serbia, Ukraine, Belorussia and Lithuania, ecumenist liars officially maintain the opposite. In the text of the Balamand Agreement (paragraph 14) we read: "According to the words of Pope John Paul II, the ecumenical endeavor of the Sister Churches of East and West, grounded in dialogue and prayer, is the search for perfect and total communion which is neither absorption, nor fusion, but a meeting in truth and love" [388].
Many books-martyrologies have been written about "truth and love" of Crusaders, inquisitors, Jesuits, Polish and Croat Catholic torturers, but can they describe the sufferings of every individual victim, let alone hundreds of thousands of them?! And in our days, wherever refined "theological dialogues" are not required, the Papists make use of the long-since tried, more effective measures, showing no disdain for violence.
In 1996 the Roman See joyfully celebrated 400 years of Brest Union. For the Orthodox population of the South-Western Russia, which in 1596 found itself subject to Catholic Polish-Lithuanian kingdom, this Union, imposed by means of lies and violence, marked the beginning of greatest disaster with no end in sight in our own days in Ukraine, Belorussia and Lithuania.
Among the legions of Papist persecutors of Orthodoxy there are two men who distinguished themselves as torturers. They lived in different periods of history but both are especially imprinted in people's memory for their cruelty.
They are Iosafat Kuntsevich and Alojzije Stepanac. The latter, the ideological executioner, and organizer of the genocide of Serbian people in 1941-45, judging by the recent speeches of Pope John-Paul II will soon be added to the host of Papist "saints". The Uniat Bishop Kuntsevich of Polotsk, who distinguished himself by particular cruelty and sadism, was already canonized as a Catholic saint (29 June 1867 by Pope Plus IX). In a ceremony which amounted to a mockery of Orthodoxy, his decayed relics (a small tuft of hair and vestments), were translated to Rome during the reign of Pope Paul VI (25 November 1963) and interred in St. Peter's Basilica under the altar of St. Basil the Great, next to the relics of the Great Universal Hierarchs and Teachers -- John Chrysostom and Gregory the Theologian.
Following the announcement of the Brest Union Orthodox people of SW Russia experienced difficult times under fanatical Papist rulers. Catholics and Uniats were now free to persecute Orthodoxy with impunity, to plunder churches and profit from the peremptory confiscation of property. One of the most inveterate among them was Iosafat Kuntsevich, the Bishop of Polotsk,
«the tireless persecutor of humiliated "schismatics" deprived of their civil rights, who forever remained a part of the history of Ukraine» [390].
Even Catholics urged this fanatic, nicknamed "soul-snatcher" by the people, to come to his senses. The famous letter of Chancellor Lev Sapega, the head of Great Principality of Lithuania, written on behalf of the Polish King, better than anything else characterizes the fierce Uniat Kuntsevich and the unfortunate state of Orthodox victims of the Brest Union. Lev Sapega wrote:
«I admit, that I too was concerned about the cause of Union and that it would be imprudent to abandon it; but it had never occurred to me that your Eminence would implement it using such violent measures... You say that you are "free to drown the infidels (i.e. those who have not accepted the Unia - L.P.), to chop their heads off"; etc. Not so! The Lord's commandment expresses a strict prohibition to all, which concerns you also. When you violated human conscience, closed churches so that people would perish like infidels without divine service, without Christian rites and sacraments; when you abused King's favors and privileges -- you managed without us; but when there is a need to suppress seditions caused by your excesses you want us to cover up for you... As to the dangers that threaten your life, one may say that everyone is the cause of one's own misfortune. Stop making trouble, do not subject us to the general hatred of the people and yourself to obvious danger and general criticism... Everywhere one hears people grumbling that you do not have any worthy priests, but only blind ones... Your ignorant priests are the bane of the people... But tell me, your Eminence, whom did you win over, whom did you attract with your severity... It will turn out that in Polotsk itself you have lost even those who until now were obedient to you. You have turned sheep into goats, you plunged the state into danger, and maybe all of us Catholics
-- into ruin... It has been rumored that they (the Orthodox) would rather be under the infidel Turks than endure such violence... you yourself are the cause of their rebellion. Instead of joy, your notorious Union brought us only troubles and discords and has become so loathsome that we would rather be without it!» [391].
"Persecution of the Orthodox (raised by Kuntsevich) repeated the horrors of the first centuries of Christianity" [391]. One of them took place on May 22 of 1620 in the Trinity Monastery near Polotsk where local inhabitants gathered to express their indignation at the ferocious persecution of the Orthodox which was instigated by Bishop Kuntsevich of Polotsk. These people suffered a terrible fate: an armed crowd of Uniats surrounded the monastery and set it on fire. As the fire was raging and destroying the monastery and burning alive everyone within its walls, Iosafat Kuntsevich was performing on a nearby hill a thanksgiving service accompanied by the cries of the victims of fire ... [393]
At last people's patience gave way, and in 1623 this "Papist and soul-snatcher", as he was called, was killed by the people of Vitebsk who suffered greatly from this fierce Uniat. King Sigizmund III severely punished the people of Vitebsk for the murder of Kuntsevich thereby earning the praise of Pope Urban VIII. Following the petition of the King and Jesuit court-preachers along with the Uniat-Jesuit party, the Pope acknowledged Kuntsevich as "blessed". At that time the Vatican could not call him a "saint" because everybody knew of his brutality, his scandalous disposition and his self-interest. To this testifies the above-cited letter of Chancellor Lev Sapega, a Latin who considered that he disgraced himself even by just corresponding with Kuntsevich. However, in spite of everything the Roman Pontiff decided to glorify Kuntsevich: "Only the Pope desirous of insulting and humiliating Orthodoxy could agree to acknowledge Iosafat as a martyr and thus delude and deceive gullible people. Jesuits-Uniats have even invented various miracles, which allegedly occurred at Iosafat's grave. The clumsiness of some of them may testify to their falsity..." [394]
It was not enough that in 1867, as we said before, the Papists glorified Kuntsevich as a "saint"; he and the similar monster Andrei Bobol were declared by the Vatican to be "spiritual protectors" of the SW Slavic region. What else but cynicism and a malevolent mockery of Orthodoxy by the Papists may one call it? The Vatican falsifiers of history, in particular the present Pope John-Paul II, do not miss a chance to praise Iosafat Kuntsevich whom they call a "hieromartyr". "Without the slightest remorse, disdaining historical truth for the sake of his interest in fighting Orthodoxy, John Paul II does not hesitate to speak of the "noble personality" of Iosafat whose blood has forever sealed the great cause of the Union. In his epistle to the Ukrainian flock "Magnum Baptismi Donum" published on April 19, 1988 not a word is said to rectify the already ingrained notion about the Union and about Kuntsevich" [395]. The Vatican also venerates and is, apparently, getting ready to glorify another "hieromartyr" -- the Croatian Primate Stepinac, the mention of whose name alone makes one shudder...
The Western Press is usually silent about the genocide of Serbian people during the Second World War. Here, on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia arbitrarily delineated by Hitler and Mussolini and separated from Yugoslavia, 2 million and 300 thousand Serbs found themselves under the Nazi regime of Ustashi. This regime was headed by the Catholic Croat agent Pavelic who was sent from Rome. He was one of the most cruel executioners in world history who has ever committed atrocities. Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac of Zagreb, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia, immediately acknowledged Pavelic, and declared the state headed by him, to be Roman Catholic, in which there should be no place for the Orthodox.
The Ustashi, encouraged by their Papist Primate Stepinac and Croatian clergy, began persecution of the Orthodox Serbs, unimaginable for civilized people, let alone Christians. Hundreds of Roman Catholic clergy took part in killings and all kinds of violent acts. "The brutal nature of the militant Croatian clerical fascism expressed itself in such terrible manifestations as to surpass the horrors of Inquisition in the Middle Ages..." [396] The well-known Croatian politician Prvoslav Grisogono in his letter (of 8 February 1942) addressed to the Papist Primate Stepinac, spoke of the infernal inventiveness of Ustashi. The letter remained unanswered [397a]. The text of the letter is as follows:
«I am writing to you as a man to a man, as a Christian to a Christian. I have been meaning to do this for months hoping that the dreadful news from Croatia would cease so that I could collect my thoughts and write to you in peace. For the last ten months Serbs have been killed and destroyed in Croatia in the most ruthless manner and the value of their property that has been destroyed reaches billions. Blushes of shame and anger cover the faces of every honest Croat.
The slaughter of Serbs began from the very first day of the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (Gospic, Gudovan, Bosanska Krajina, etc.) and has continued relentlessly to this very day. The horror is not only in the killing. The killing includes everybody: old men, women and children. With accompanying barbarian torture. These innocent Serbs have been impaled, fire has been lit on their bare chest, they have been roasted alive, burned in their homes and churches while still living, covered with boiling water and then their skin peeled off and salt poured into their wounds, their eyes have been pulled out, their ears, noses and tongues cut off, the priests have had their beards and mustaches torn off from their skulls, their sex organs severed and put into their mouths, they have been tied to trucks and then dragged along the ground, nails have been pressed into their heads, their heads nailed to the floor, they have been thrown alive into wells and over cliffs, and grenades thrown after them, their heads smashed against wall, their backs broken against rocks and tree stumps, and many other horrible tortures were perpetrated, such as normal people can hardly imagine. Their rivers Sava, Drava, the Danube and their tributaries have carried thousands and thousands of their corpses. Dead bodies have been found with the inscription : "direction Belgrade -- traveling to King Peter". In a boat which was found on the Sava river there was a heap of children's heads with the head of a woman (which could have been a head of one of the mothers of the children) with the inscription: "Meat for the Jovanova Market in Belgrade."
Horrifying is the case of Mileva Bozinic from Stanbandza whose child was removed from her womb. There was also the case of the roasted heads in Bosnia, the vessels full of Serbian blood, the cases of Serbs being forced to drink the warm blood of their slaughtered kin. Countless women, girls and children in front of their mothers were raped or
else sent off to Ustashi camps to serve the Ustashi; rapes even took place on the altars of Orthodox churches. In the Petrinje county a son was forced to rape his own mother. The slaughter of the Serbs in the Glina Orthodox church and the murder of Serbs on the altar of the Kladusa church is without precedent in history. There are detailed and
original accounts of all these horrors. Even the Germans and Italians were astounded by these crimes. They photographed a huge number of cases of such slaughter. The Germans are saying that the Croatians did this also during the Thirty-years War and that is why there has been a saying in Germany since then:
"God save us from plague, hunger and Croats".
The Srem Germans despise us because of this and behave in a more humane fashion with Serbs. The Italians photographed a vessel with 3.5 kilograms of Serbian eyes, as well as a Croat who wore a necklace strung with Serbian eyes, and another one who came to Dubrovnik with a belt on which severed Serbian tongues were hanging!
The horrors of the camps in which thousands of Serbs were killed or were left to die from exposure, hunger and cold weather, are too terrible to mention. The Germans have been talking about a camp in Lika where there were thousands of Serbs: but when the Germans got there they found the camp empty, drenched in blood and bloody clothing. In that camp it has been said a Serbian bishop also lost his life. Thousands upon thousands of Serbs in the camp of Jasenovac are still being tortured as they are spending fierce winter in wooden Gypsy shacks with no straw or covering and with a ration of two potatoes per day. In the history of Europe there have been no similar cases. One would have to go to Asia at the time of Tamerlane, or Genghis-Khan, or to Africa, to the countries of their bloodthirsty rulers to come upon similar situations. These events have shamed the name of Croatia for centuries to come. Nothing can absolve us fully from this ever again. We will not be able to tell even the last wretched man in the Balkans about our thousand year old Croatian culture, because even the Gypsies never perpetrated such cruelties. Why I am writing this to you, when you are not a political personage and cannot bear responsibility for all this (sic!). Here is why: in all these unprecedented barbarian crimes which are more than Godless, our Catholic church participated in two ways. A large number of clergy, priests, friars and organized Catholic youth took an active part in all this. It has also happened that Catholic priests became camp guards and Ustashi accomplices and so approved of the torture and slaughter of Christians. A Catholic priest even personally slaughtered an Orthodox clergyman. They could not have done all this without the permission of their bishops, and if they did, then they would have had to lose their jobs and taken to court. Since this did not happen, it means that their bishops granted them permission.
Secondly, the Catholic church made use of all this to convert the surviving Serbs. And while the soil was still steaming from the innocent victims' blood, while groans shuddered from the chests of the surviving victims, the priests, friars, nuns carried in one hand the Ustashi daggers and in the other their prayer books and rosaries. The whole of Srem is inundated with leaflets written by Bishop Aksamovic and printed in his printing shop in Djakovo, calling upon Serbs to save their lives and property by converting to Catholicism. It was as if our church wanted to show that it could destroy souls just as the Ustashi authorities destroy bodies. It is an even greater blot on the Catholic church, since at the same time many Orthodox churches, all the Orthodox monasteries have been confiscated, their property plundered as well as many historical treasures. Even the Patriarchal church in Sremski Karlovci has not been spared. All this violence against conscience and the spirit has brought even greater disgrace to the Croat nation and name.»
During the years 1941-1945 the Independent State of Croatia accomplished a monstrous plan publicly formulated by the Ustashi minister Mile Budak: "We will murder one third of Serbs, evict another, and we will convert the rest to the Catholic faith thus turning them into Croats" [397b].
In this Roman-Catholic Ustashi land of horrors, where the Orthodox were forced to wear a blue arm-band with the letter "P" ("Pravoslavec" - Engl. Orthodox), similar to the Jews who wore the hexagonal yellow star. During four years Ustashi had tortured and killed about 800.000 Serbs, 40.000 Gypsies and 30.000 Jews, deported 280.000 and forcibly rebaptized 240.000 [398].
With a particularly ferocious hatred the clerical fascists attacked Orthodox churches and Orthodox clergy. They created a special Institution For the Destruction of Orthodox Churches. Almost all Orthodox churches on the territory of the Independent Croatia were destroyed, burned, or converted into Catholic churches. As a whole 450 Orthodox churches suffered destruction in these terrible years in the Independent State of Croatia [399]. In the Uniat diocese of Krizhevac, for example, all Orthodox churches and chapels were turned into Catholic ones. Terrible fate befell Orthodox bishops and hundreds of priests in Croatia. They were either murdered with exceptional fanatical cruelty, or evicted to Serbia.
Numerous facts of an unusual cruelty are known to have been perpetrated by the Catholic clergy in the course of their persecution of Orthodoxy. We will list only a few of the huge number of these cases [400].
«Serbs were massacred either straight away, unexpectedly on the spot, or after they were first assembled in transit camps, usually under false pretexts, or, finally, in concentration camps especially intended for this purpose.
Catholic priest Mate Mogush instructed his flock: "So far we have served the Catholic faith with a prayer-book and a cross, but now the time has come to use guns and revolvers".
Director of the Department for Denominations, a Franciscan monk Dioniz Jurichev who heard confessions of Pavelich, declared: "In some regions I have already mopped up everything, from a chicken to an old man, and if need be, I shall do the same here also, since it is no longer a sin to kill even a seven-year old child, if he opposes our Ustashi order"...
In the summer of 1941 in the Livno district Dr. Srechko Peric, a Franciscan monk, addressed Croatians as follows: "Brother Croats, go ahead and massacre all Serbs, starting with my sister who married a Serb, and then all Serbs one after another. When you have finished with them, come and see me in the church where I shall hear your confessions and all your sins will be forgiven". Under Srechko Peric's guidance 5,000 Serbs were massacred in Livno and its surrounding area.
In the village of Balevci, as a result of the instigation by a Catholic priest Sidoni Sholtz, an Orthodox priest Georgi Bogic was brutally murdered. At midnight he was dragged out of his home; his nose and tongue were cut off, his beard singed; he was disembowled and the intestines were wound round his neck.
In February 1942, Jesuit Filippovic led a gang of the Ustashi to the mine near the town of Banja-Luka, and having checked the passports and ascertained that there were 52 Orthodox amongst the miners, ordered them all to be massacred. Then he set off for the village of Drakulica where these miners lived, and murdered about 1,500 people, i.e. all the inhabitants. Only one woman and her five children managed to escape, but she became insane after the horrors she had experienced [401].
In the villages around Mostar Catholic priests in their sermons suggested to the people that it was no sin to kill a Serb because it was now war-time.
A Franciscan monk called those of Croats who did not kill a single Serb "old women". Some Catholic clerics personally led their brutal "flock". Such was priest Ante Dzhuric who became an Ustashi commander and committed a series of crimes in this role.
In the Stolac region, where about 4,000 innocent Serbs were massacred, the killers were led by two Catholic priests, Marko Zovko and Tomas Ilja. The latter forced many Orthodox inhabitants of the village Klepec to convert to Catholicism, gave them Communion and then sent them to a school building where Ustashi killed them all to the very last. "You are mistaken, -- he would say to Serbs, -- if you think that we convert you to Catholicism in order that your property, pension or wages might be saved. We do not want to save your life, only your souls."» It should be noted that this was the usual practice of clerics-fascists: the Orthodox who were converted to Catholicism were often murdered soon after their conversion, which, according to the Papist "missionaries", guaranteed the salvation of their souls...
Catholic priest Dragutin Kamber who was elected the mayor of the town of Doboj, left an evil memory of himself for the forcible rebaptizing and mass murders. Documents have proved that Catholic "pastors" were involved in the genocide of Serbs carried out in concentration camps. One of them in the Jasenovac concentration camp was Catholic priest Brzica who was notable for the speed with which he knifed his victims.
Particularly horrifying are the descriptions of the methods applied to annihilate Orthodox Serbs, including their women, children and old people, in the Croatian concentration camps. There were not less than twenty of them with the terrible death-camp at Jasenovac amongst them. People were stabbed with a special knife called "Serb-chopper"; victims had their eyes gouged out, their heads smashed... The torture of prisoners committed by Catholic
"murderers in God's name" at times are beyond the limits of human imagination...
An involuntary bewilderment is caused by the facts of a monstrous perversion of Christianity by an organization which is called Christian and pretends to be a true exponent of Christianity. Professor Victor Novak, the author of the book "Magnum Crimen" which we have quoted expressed the opinion that
in the Independent State of Croatia Papacy received an opportunity "to discard all its masques and freely manifest its true essence..."
In our own times, 50 years later, in 1991 the suffering of Serbs resumed. "In many villages with mixed population Croats and Moslems brutally massacred their long-time Orthodox neighbors and relatives. In the villages occupied or, on the contrary, given up by the Croatian or Moslem troops, civilian Serbian population was often totally massacred. Cleaved skulls, gouged out eyes, disembowled bodies, cut off ears, bodies burned by a blowlamp... In 1991 forty child-martyrs were tortured to death in Vukovar, on the eve of its liberation by Serbian National Army" [402].
The words of the Memorandum of the Holy Bishops' Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church which met in May, 1992 have a tragic, lonely ring to them:
«As of yesterday, Serbian people in Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina have ceased to exist!.. Today Serbian Christians commemorate the 50th anniversary of their suffering on the territory of the notorious Nazist "Independent State" of Croatia, as well as in Kosovo and Metohia -- by experiencing new suffering...
Tens of thousands dead, many more wounded, more than a million of the evicted and refugees; destroyed churches [403], houses, devastated villages and desolate homes. With deep sorrow we must state that once again concentration camps are opened for Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. For instance, in Sukhopol, near Virovitica, Odzhak in Bosanska Posavina; Duvno and Livno, Smil'an in Lika and other places. Refugees testify that once again, as in 1941, bottomless pits are opened into which innocent Serbs are cast...
We appeal to all European states... to exert their influence upon the government of Croatia, to prevent the destruction of our churches and our religious centers. Unfortunately this also occurs in the battle-free places, as it recently happened in Zagreb (I l April 1992) where the Metropolitan's Residence and the Museum of Zagreb-Ljubljana Metropolia were blown up. We also request the guarantee of a free passage to our bishops and clergy in the parts of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina presently controlled by Croatian and Moslem troops, in order to allow them to perform their duty, their pastoral and humanitarian service regardless of the republican and state borders...» [404]
At present, after the "victory of Western democracy", citizens of former Yugoslavia, contrary to all universally recognized human rights, are required to produce a document confirming their non-Orthodoxy, in order to get to Croatian territory! [405]
Whilst officially calling for the termination of this war in Yugoslavia, the Vatican has, in fact, supported its co-religionists Croats. An example of its action against Orthodoxy is quoted in the book by French author Jacques Merlino: "The Bank of Vatican sends $1,988,300 through the Institute for the Dissemination of Religion for the purchase of arms in Beirut and their delivery to Croatia." [406]
A year after the Balamand Agreement, in September 1994, John Paul II visited Croatia and kneeled in prayer at the grave of Cardinal Stepinac who died in 1960 at the time of his house-arrest [407].
Accompanied by incessant applause of the worshippers in the 12th century Cathedral in Zagreb, the Roman Pope extolled Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac as
"undoubtedly the most outstanding martyr in Croatian history", calling him
"the hero of sanctity" [408]. The Croatian State Television interpreted the choice of words uttered by John Paul II as a sign of the Vatican's intention to canonize the Archbishop of Zagreb who was sentenced in 1946 by the Communist government of Yugoslavia for his collaboration with the Croatian fascist regime responsible for the mass murder of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies [409]. Cardinal Stepinac, "according to European diplomats,
was the most compromised hierarch of the Roman Catholic clergy in the Nazi occupied Europe." [410]
The quite probable future canonization of this Papal "hero of sanctity", just as the canonization of Iosafat Kuntsevich, which already took place, explicitly demonstrate the Vatican's hatred towards Orthodoxy.
Papists themselves, however, along with the representatives of the once again legalized (after the downfall of the Communist regime) Uniat Church in Western Ukraine, demand the repentance of the Orthodox for the persecution of Uniats by the Soviet government which was pursuing its political aims. These demands are of an aggressive, openly anti-Orthodox and anti-Russian nature, and often turn into forcible actions against Orthodox people who, once again, are isolated and deprived of civil rights. The haters of Orthodoxy and of Russians have even gone so far as to divide the saints and their feast days into the Russian and Ukrainian ones! But Russophobia is a secret form of Christophobia, as was pointed out by Metropolitan Vitaly, the First Hierarch of Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.
Nobody denies that Uniats of Galicia and Carpatho-Ukraine fell victims to the repressive politics of the Stalin's regime; their Church was liquidated, a part of clergy and lay-people became prisoners of the Gulag, and the rest were forced in 1946 to join the Sergianist Moscow Patriarchate.
However, a completely new light has been shed on interrelations between the Uniat Church and the Soviet regime by the state archives which were opened and made accessible for a certain time following the disintegration of the USSR.
It has turned out that immediately after the Soviet army occupied, in the summer of 1944, the territory of Western Ukraine and Belorussia, the head of the "Greek-Catholic Church", Metropolitan Sheptitsky, sent a letter to Moscow addressed to the Council of Religious Cults of USSR, requesting the recognition of the Uniat Church by the Soviet Government. "The very fact of the Uniat Church appealing to the Soviet Government had
no precedent in history and the Bolsheviks immediately seized this opportunity (as they did previously in the case of Metropolitan Sergius' Declaration) to use the Uniat Church for their own ends, namely for the purpose of demoralizing the anti-Soviet nationalistic organizations" [411].
At the subsequent meeting (of 22 December 1944) of the Uniat delegation and the Chairman of the Council, comrade Polyansky, priest Gavriil Kostelnik, a member of the delegation, said: "The very arrival of the delegation demonstrates that the Greek-Catholic Church has made the appropriate contacts and
intends to be directed by the Soviet Government. The arrival of this delegation will be of great significance for the young people who are involved in the Bender movement, being an unambiguous demonstration on the part of the Church, regarding
who it is with and who it wishes to be with."
[412]
In its subsequent practice "the Uniat Church has not only declared its complete loyalty to the Soviet regime, but actively helped it to fight against those who did not want Galicia to become Communist. The Uniats actively supported Bolsheviks with their sermons, epistles and practical advice which, undoubtedly, contributed to the defeat of the anti-Communist movement" [413].
However, "the Soviet-Uniat idyll" did not last long, and already in March 1945 the Kremlin began to change its attitude to the Uniat Church and to consider it as "an agent of the Vatican, which strived to enforce its influence in the post-war world...
The alliance of the Soviet regime with the Greek-Catholics did not take place through no "fault" of the Uniats (they were prepared to serve Bolsheviks), but because the regime itself did not want to have anything to do with them, and preferred to see "the well tried" Moscow Patriarchate in Galicia. This should be kept in mind by those who parade the Uniat Church as a protector of people's interests in Western Ukraine and a guardian of their national identity."
[414]
The Uniat's masters, the Roman Catholics, have always acted in exactly the same way as the Uniats themselves did. They considered that for the destruction of Orthodoxy any means are justified. Prior to the war, in 1913, Pope Pius X, who was subsequently canonized by the Vatican, declared Orthodox Russia to be Papacy's main enemy, in the fight against which from as early as the mid 19th century it placed its greatest hopes on a revolution [415].
A Benedictine monk Chrysostom Bauer wrote: "Bolshevism kills priests, profanes... churches and sacred objects.., destroys monasteries, but is not this, precisely the religious mission of irreligious Bolshevism in that it dooms to disappearance... the carriers of a schismatic idea, in other words it creates a tabula rasa, and thus makes spiritual reconstruction possible" [416]. A Catholic publication in Vienna is more specific: "Bolshevism makes it possible to convert the stagnant Russia to Catholicism." [417]
And, as it happened many times before, in the pursuit of its objectives the Vatican did not fail to take advantage of the misfortune which befell Russia in the years of the Bolshevik terror. The Jesuit Bishop Michel d'Herbigny, appointed in 1923 the Rector of the Papal Eastern Institute in Rome, was "the soul, the mainspring" of Vatican's Eastern policy. He was especially authorized by the Pope of Rome to conduct negotiations "with the Kremlin leaders to promote wide dissemination of Catholicism and thus to supplant Orthodoxy in Russia and in Russian souls. For this purpose d'Herbigny traveled three times to the Soviet Union on a French diplomatic passport. In the Soviet Union he consecrated several bishops with the purpose of establishing a contingent of clergy acceptable to the Soviet regime" [418].
For two decades after 1917 Catholics "were ready to close their eyes to all the brutalities of Bolsheviks, including the execution of Bishop Butkevich and imprisonment of Bishops Tseplyak, Maltsky and Fedorov; but on the other hand... the Vatican expressed its concern on the occasion of an attempt on Soviet agent Vorovskoy's life in Lausanne (Switzerland)!" [419]
Not in the least embarrassed by the fact that the Bolsheviks were destroying historical Russia, devastating Russian souls and churches, murdering thousands of our Holy New Martyrs, the Vatican secretly collaborated with them, justifying by these amoral means their own not less amoral objective.
Only at the end of 1929 -- beginning of 1930, having become aware of its political defeat, the Vatican began "to speak loudly against Bolshevik crimes which so far it seemed not to have noticed, and in 1937, 20 years after the Revolution, Pius XI issued his famous Encyclica "Divini Redemptoris" (Divine Redeemer) censuring Communism" [420].
In the post-Soviet period, in the years following the reconstruction, there is an essentially religious war going on in Ukraine, and particularly in Galicia, inspired and organized, as before, by the Papist Rome. The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, together with the nationalistic "Rukh" are an absolute political power in the Ukraine today. It is they who carry out the thoroughly considered Vatican plans for the destruction of Orthodoxy on the territory of the former Kievan Russia. And if the persecution of the Uniats under the Soviets was directed by the secular, atheistic power, today's persecution of Orthodoxy is the responsibility of church leaders. [421]
Everything is repeated once again: churches are seized, Communion Cloths defiled, Holy Gifts desecrated... The inhabitants of the town of Truskavets wrote to the
Moskovskii Tserkovnyi Vestnik (Moscow Church Messenger) that Greek-Catholic (Uniat) priests sometimes acting on their own accord, but more often with the help of informal activists (militant Ukrainian nationalists), seize Orthodox churches and declare from the ambo that
"one may even kill for the sake of the triumph of Catholicism, and they also say that, the Pope of Rome himself has given his blessing for such acts!" [422]
We could cite many examples of forced "Catholicizing" of Orthodox people in this area which is carried out with the help of repressive organs of the local authorities. Let us look at just one incident which took place in Sambor in the Lvov region which shows the true face of Papacy and the cruelty of Catholic proselytism.
In March 1991, a group of about 100 Orthodox people of Sambor refused to leave the church of the Nativity of the Holy Mother of God. In protest against the decision of the city authorities that the Church be turned over to the Uniats, these people had been on a hunger-strike for many days. Together with priests there were old people, as well as women and children. In spite of the daily taunts of Catholics who would throw burning torches and iron rods into the church, the Orthodox held on firmly and remained in the church until autumn.
When the local authorities failed to prevail over the defenders of the church by starving them out, they decided to end the protest by force. On September 17 (4 days before the Feast day of this church) subdivisions of OMON (security forces) of about 900 men armed "to their teeth" were summoned to Sambor. They were ordered to take the church of the Nativity of the Holy Mother of God by force, and to throw out all the people who were huddling there.
To begin with, the attackers used tear gas, and then drove a massive truck through the door of the church and began assaulting and injuring all the people inside. Several children suffered broken arms. The Head of Lvov Orthodox Brotherhood, Fr. Ioann Shvets, was severely mutilated. The rector of the church, Fr. Alexander Shvets, who courageously resisted the violators, was cruelly beaten up. <<Bleeding people were forcefully dragged out of the church in which they had prayed all their life; they were taken to the militia lock-up and thrown into single cells for the night. Into a cell where they had placed the Shvets brothers, they squeezed in 12 more bleeding people with broken arms. Thus the "order" was restored in Sambor...>> [423]
On the territory of ancient Kiev, in which Russia received the holy Baptism, today's Latins, as if trying to prove their superiority and power, have established Embassy of the Catholic Italy right on the site of the Kiev-Caves Lavra, where every inch of soil is hallowed by the saints who sweated blood in their struggle for holy Orthodoxy.
At the present time, 4 years after the Balamand Agreement when practically all Orthodox churches in Western Ukraine have been taken away from the Orthodox, the Uniats are using the more covert methods of expansion, fully in the spirit of the Balamand Agreement. Following the Vatican's directives not only may the Uniat priests marry, but even their appearance must be like that of an Orthodox priest: complete with a beard, a moustache, vestments... By means of this latest falsification the Papists intend to deceive the people and to entice them into their nets. Here for all to see is the ancient lie and the enmity of Papists and of the Church which calls itself the "Sister" of Orthodoxy! |
[388] This is the name of the book by Herve Lauricre: "Ubice a Bozhje ime", in which he writes about the crimes of Croatian Catholics-Fascists against Serbian people inspired by the Catholic clergy -- the Fascist clerics -- who often were executioners themselves. (Belgrade, publ. by Filip Vishnic, 1987).
[389] The Balamand document of the Joint Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church on "Uniatism", Method of Union of the Past and the Present Search for Full Communion". Episkepsis, No. 496, Sept. 1993, parag. 14. Whereas the Patriarch of Constantinople is quoted only once in this document, the words of the Pope of Rome are quoted four times, thus undoubtedly emphasizing the privilege and importance of the one who thinks of the population of the planet earth as his flock.
[390] See Alexei Grigorenko, " Unia v istorii Ukrainy -- Rusi" (Unia in the history of Ukraine -- Russia). Novosibirsk, 1991, p. 41.
[391] "The Truth about Iosafat Kuntsevich", publ. by the Vilnius Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit, Vilnius, 1896; reprinted by the Orthodox Brotherhood of Archangel Michael, Minsk, 1993. Quoted from the publication of this text in Pravoslavnaia Zhizn' , No.553, Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY, January 1996, pp. 20-27.
[392] Ibid., p. 25.
[393] See Archpriest Mitrofan Znosko-Borovsky, "Litso Vatikana. Papstvo i Rossija" (The Face of the Vatican. Papacy and Russia). Orthodox Russia, No.6, 1992, pp.6-7.
[394] "The Truth About Iosafat Kuntsevich", p. 27.
[395] Germain Ivanoff-Trinadtzaty, "The Vatican and Russia", M., 1993, p. 14.
[396] Review of the book by Victor Novak (Prof. of the University of Belgrade) "Half a Century of Catholicism in Croatia", publ. in JNIP, 1949, No. 2. Quoted from "Papstvo i ego bor'ba s Pravoslaviem" (Papacy and its Struggle with Orthodoxy), M., 1993, p. 80.
[397a] Quoted from: "Sister Churches. Five Hundred Years After Florence." The Holy Orthodox Church in North America, Boston, 1994, pp. 38-41.
[397b] Victor Novak, "Magnum Crimen", Zagreb, 1948, p. 605.
[398] See "Half a Century of Serbian Golgotha (1941 - 1991)", articles by Dr. Marko S. Markovic, esp.: "Martyrdom of Serbs and of the Serbian Orthodox Church during the Second World War" in Lazarica, No. 136, Journal of the Serbian Orthodox Church of the Holy Prince Lazar in Birmingham, ed. Fr. Milenko Zebic - 131 Cob Lane, Boumville, Birmingham B301QE Tel. 021-458 5273. In Carlo Falconi's book "Le silence de Pie XII, 1939-1945", Monaco, Ed. du Rocher, p.264, the author presents data from the Enciclopedia Treccani according to which more than 700,000 Serbs were annihilated as a result of genocide. According to the Serbian Orthodox Church the number of victims reached about 800,000 (Dr. Marko S. Markovic, ibid. p. 6).
[399] Lazarica No. 136, p. 10.
[400] Regarding this matter see: "Dokumenti o protunarodnom radu i zlocinma jednog dela katolickog klera" (Documents about the atrocities and crimes against the people perpetrated by a section of the Catholic clergy), Zagreb, Ed. Horvat/Shtambuk, 1946, esp. Ch. II; Prof. Viktor Novak's book "Magnum Crimen", (esp. Ch. XVII "Terrorism and Catholicization"); Herve Lauricre, "Ubice a Bozhje ime" (Murderers in God's Name), Belgrade, Filip Visnic, 1987; Fr. (now Bishop[) Atanasie Jevtic, "Ot Kosova do Jadavna" (From Kosovo to Jadovno), Belgrade, Prosveta, 1987; "Papacy and its Struggle against Orthodoxy".
[401] About the atrocities carried out by fra Miroslav Filippovic-Maistorovic see "Documents about the atrocities and crimes against the people by a section of the Catholic clergy", Zagreb, 1946, pp. 165, 168-171, 174, 178; Viktor Novak, "Magnum Crimen", pp. 648-649, 777, 871.
[402] "Papacy and Its Struggle Against Orthodox", p. 85.
[403] On 12 January 1995 a representative of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia stated that 279 Orthodox Churches were destroyed in Croatia, about 10,000 Serbian children in public schools were forcibly converted to Catholicism; the government does not permit Orthodox clergy to return to their flocks. (Orthodox Russia, No. 1527, 15/28 January, 1995, p. 16).
[404] Quoted from "Papacy and Its Struggle Against Orthodoxy", pp. 85-86.
[405] Ibid., p. 85.
[406] Jacques Merlino. "Les verits Yougoslaves ne sont pas toutes bonnes a dire", Ed. Albin Michel, Fvrier 1994, p. 84.
[407] The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 1994.
[408] Ibid.
[409] Ibid.
[410] Ibid.
[411] D.P. Anashkin, "Nesostoiavshijsia soiuz. Uniaty i sovetskaia vlast'" (The Alliance which did not take place. The Uniats and the Soviet Power), Orthodox Russia, No. 1550, 1/14 January 1996, p. 13.
[412] Otechestvennye Arkhivy, No. 3, Moscow, 1994, pp. 60-64.
[413] D.P. Anashkin, op. cit., p. 13.
[414] Ibid., p. 15.
[415] See Germain Ivanoff-Trinadtzaty, "The Vatican and Russia", pp. 17-18.
[416] Ch. Bauer, in Bayrischer Kurier, 8.03.1930. Quoted from: Germain Ivanoff-Trinadtzaty, "The Vatican and Russia", p. 20.
[417] Schtinere Zukunft, 15.11.1931. Quoted from: Germain Ivanoff-Trinadtzaty, ibid.
[418] Germain Ivanoff-Trinadtzaty, ibid.
[419] Ibid. p. 22.
[420] Ibid., p. 24.
[421] Compare: Germain Ivanoff-Trinadtzaty, "The Vatican and Russia", p. 12.
[422] Alexei Grigorenko, "Unia...", p. 92.
[423] Alexei Grigorenko, "Bez kresta... Zapadnaia Ukraina: zdes' ob'iavlena voina Pravoslaviju" (Without the Cross... Western Ukraine: the War is Declared Against Orthodoxy Here), newspaper Den', No. 20, 10 October 1991, Moscow, p. 4, col. 1. |
