i stumbled across this story when watching an episode of nazi collaborators on the yesterday channel.

a little background. ante pavelic reached prominence in the mid 1920's as an exponent of croatian independence from the collective state of yugoslavia. he had very clear ideas about this greater croatia - a state with a catholic constitution free of muslims orthodox christians and jews. naturally he was a hit with the vatican right away.

it is actually inaccurate to call him a nazi collaborator, as his ustase movement was executing jews and muslims long before any whiff of german involvement. one for the folks who still believe hitler to be an isolated phenomenon. anyway, by the end of the 1930's he is believed to have overseen the forced conversion displacement and murder of around 1.5 million people. a million of these were executed jews orthodox christians and muslims.

the vatican was so unashamedly impressed with this and various treaties with mussolini regarding the dalmation coast that, right after signing the treaty, pavelic was granted a devotional audience with pius XII, as a means for formal recognition of his 'good work' by the holy see.

i would challenge anyone to find me a clearer indication of the vaticans approval of hitlers final solution for the 'jewish problem', and a greater indictment of the washed out 'secular politics leads to great evils' argument which the religious apologists still love to reach for.

oh, but things have changed you cry.... sorry, wrong again. pope benedict personally set palevic's formal date for beatification for dec 21, 2012. for those of you who are not sure of the significance of this it means he is formally recognised as a martyr and will become known as saint ante of bradina. yep, that's right folks - one of the biggest genocidalists of the 20th century is to become a saint, and join the likes of francis of assisi and saint mary magdalene. which is ironic because although i find the idea of sainthood a joke, i'm sure that many of the saints through the years would not be best pleased to be lumped in with this a-hole.

my conclusions - the vatican is deeply flawed and has to go - big surprise. also, if this does not make you want to puke with rage then you the reader are deeply flawed. if you are a catholic and this does not make you want to turn your back on your church, then, again, you are deeply flawed. if this still fails to make you understand that various popes have been deeply evil people and for various reasons should rot in dungeons, then you're just plain stupid.

can you tell this made my blood boil a wee bit??

For some reason, I just am not surprised. I don't have much faith in goodness some days.

Who needs Jews anyway?

you know - i don't even make that distinction anymore - not to dismiss the treatment which jews have suffered over the centuries, but because i see all victims of this kind of crap as equal, be they jews, muslims, bible students, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped or alcoholics.

to me, if you do make that distinction, i think you are some how acceding to the discriminatory thinking which leads to racism and genocide. for me there are no jews christians and muslims. there are only people.

i remember some time ago louis theroux did a program on neo nazis in the usa. when he was cornered by one of the bigots and pinned down with the question 'are you a f-ing jew', his reply was that to give any response to that question would be to give credibility to the bigoted thinking which regards such questions as necessary. it was a superb response, and really struck a chord with me.

Doesnt the pope himself have a somewhat questionable past whenit comes to Nazis? I seem to remember he was involved in Hitlers youth corp

I have tried to find something about this proposed beatification, but without success.
Can you point me in the right direction, Janimal, please?

complete beatification lists are all but impossible to find - it seems to be quite a clandestine process, which is unsurprising in many ways.

pavelic:

http://one-evil.org/people/people_20c_Pavelic.htm

stepinac, who was pavelics 'handler':

http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=stepinac

pius XII, the ww2 pope, and whose allegiance with mass murderers is now unquestionable:

http://one-evil.org/people/people_20c_Pius_XII.htm

it is much easier to find information on the beatifications of stepinac (who was convicted of war crimes and served 5 years of a 16 year scentence) and pius XII who harboured known war criminals in the vatican and only escaped prosecution because of his position... although the information on pavelic is a little more scant, in light of the common knowledge of the beatifications of stepinac and pius XII i see absolutely no reason to disbelieve that pavelic is to be beatified. it absolutely fits the pattern.

cetan - ratzinger grew up in the weimar republic, where the nazi movement started. he would have been in the hitler youth by default because of his age. more significantly, he is said to have been an enthusiastic member of the movement. thats apart from him heading the largest paedophile ring in history. but then he's the pope so he'll get off scott free.

As a Presbyterian, I agree that there are huge flaws in the catholic church. However, it seems unreasonable to describe the church's followers as unreasonable and stupid.

If we're going to live in a society that's truly open and accepting of all people, that means understanding that some people have different beliefs and tolerating that. So Catholics think the pope is holey, even though others might not agree. does that make them horrible people? Non-Catholics beleive a multitude of things that Catholics think are wrong. That doesn't necessarily make them right either.

Please note that I said beliefs, not actions. I am not okay with killing innocent people based on factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Nor do I beleive in things such as segregation, and that sort of thing. Genocide and discrimination are wrong.

Why I had a wry smile while reading this . .

Did not surprise me at all.

erm, yes. someone once said something about there being no greater evil than the inaction of good men. in light of the many evils perpretated at the top of the holy see, i have no sympathy with the millions who still choose to see the pope as a demigod and the catholic church as a righteous institution. they either agree with such actions, turn a blind eye to them or are too ignorant to acknowledge them, all three being an inexcusable premise for belonging to a movement.

there is only one decent thing for catholics to do and that is to root out these evils. and that aint happening.