The Silent Voice

The pale, thin man who lay dying last week behind a police guard in his native village of Krasic had never worn his cardinal's red robe. But no living prince of the Roman Catholic Church had a better right to it than Alojzije Cardinal Stepinac, 61, Roman Catholic Primate of Yugoslavia. For years, he was a silent but unforgotten symbol of the war between Communism and Christianity, but he did not come quickly to his calling. The seventh of eleven children born to a farm family, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, was twice decorated for valor before being captured by the Italians. After the Armistice, he studied agriculture and economics, planning to take over the family farm, but in 1924 he decided on the priesthood and went to study in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1930. Only four years later he was one of three candidates for an archbishopric submitted by Pope Pius XI to King Alexander of Yugoslavia. The King passed over the two other distinguished clergymen to make Stepinac, 36, the youngest archbishop in the church. Three years later, he was Archbishop of Zagreb, spiritual leader of the predominantly Catholic Croats.

Martyr Complex? In 1941, after the Germans took over Yugoslavia, they established a puppet state of Croatia, over which they put fanatic Nationalist Dr. Ante Pavelic. Archbishop Stepinac announced the founding of the new state from the cathedral and served on its councils, thereby earning the enmity of the Orthodox minority who were persecuted by Pavelic. Stepinac, however, opposed the excesses of the Pavelic regime, refused to accept its forcible converts to Catholicism, sheltered fugitive Jews.

When Tito came to power, Archbishop Stepinac denounced his antichurch materialism and his political tyranny, drew a 17-day jail sentence in 1945. Curious about such a stubborn prelate, Tito summoned him and saw at once what he was up against. He tried to avoid a showdown with this sallow, unsmiling man. "I do not want steps taken against Stepinac," he is reported to have said afterward. "He has a martyr complex." But the outspoken archbishop was getting to be too much of a hero; people began to kneel as he passed on his daily walks through Zagreb.

Tito struck then, and the world was shocked by the cynical mockery of Stepi-nac's twelve-day trial for collaboration with the Nazi puppet regime during the war. The sentence: 16 years at hard labor.

Too Many Reds. Tito took good care of his prisoner. In grim Lepoglava Prison, Stepinac occupied a cell with an adjoining chapel, got good food and all the books he wanted. Unlike Hungary's Cardinal Mindszenty, Archbishop Stepinac issued no pronouncements against the regime. He sat silent, and in the free world his silence sounded as a cry of reproach. Tito would gladly have been rid of him. Through a U.S. newspaperman he offered him his freedom if he would agree never again to practice his priesthood in Yugoslavia. Replied Stepinac bluntly: "I am completely indifferent concerning any thoughts of my liberation. I know why I suffer. It is for the rights of the Catholic Church. I am ready to die each day for the church. The Catholic Church cannot be, nor will it ever be, the slave of any regime."

In 1951, when the archbishop's health began to fail, Tito released him from jail but confined him to the village of Krasic (pop. 450) where he was born. He was allowed to say Mass without a congregation in the local church. Pope lius XII made him a cardinal in 1953--and Stepinac refused to go to Rome for his red hat because he was certain that he would never get back into the country. Said he: "My place is with my people."

In 1953 the cardinal developed a rare blood disease, polycythemia, characterized by too rapid multiplication of red corpuscles. This prompted one of his rare jokes: "I am suffering from an excess of reds." Last week Stepinac grew worse, developed congested lungs, died of a pulmonary embolism.

Beneath the Altar. Pope John hastened to honor the first cardinal-martyr of "the silent church" with a Solemn Requiem Mass in St. Peter's--a ceremony usually reserved for cardinals who have died in Rome. And once again Tito backed down before the silent witness of Cardinal Stepinac. On the ground that Stepinac had been stripped of his archbishopric by the state--Stepinac had always denied that the state had any authority to do so--Tito first decreed that the cardinal's funeral could take place only in the little church at Krasic. But late last week, in tacit recognition of Stepinac's true status, he gave permission for a funeral with full honors in Zagreb Cathedral and burial beneath the high altar.

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