Homilies and Addresses 2007
Mass with the Croatian Community in Honour of Blessed Alojzije Stepinac of Zagreb

Celebrated By Archbishop Denis Hart
at St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne
on Saturday, 10th January, 2007 at 6.00pm

Introduction

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today we celebrate the feast of Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, the martyr of Croatia. 

His constancy of faith in the face of Communist demands to rent asunder the Catholic Church in Croatia, his imprisonment in Lepoglava on trumped up charges and his house arrest for more than eight years in Krasic are an eloquent invitation to each of us to follow the way of Jesus Christ.

Let us call to mind our sins that we, like Blessed Alojzije, may be men and women of Jesus Christ.

Homily

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today in Blessed Alojzije Stepinac we celebrate the heavenly victory of a remarkable bishop and martyr for the Church and for the other victims of persecution of Communist Yugoslavia.

His whole life from birth on 8th May 1898 to his death on 10th February 1960 and his Beatification on 3rd October 1998, is one of remarkable faithfulness to the Lord’s will.

The challenge for each of us and for your families comes from the example of Blessed Alojzije’s mother, Barbara.  She was a woman who prayed daily and fasted three times a week, so that her son would become a priest.  She never told him and when he was ordained she would fast even more that he became a holy priest.  This for us is a reminder of the power of prayer in family life and invites every family here to be constant in Sunday Mass, in daily prayer and in faithfulness to Jesus Christ.  Archbishop Frane Franic said that his courage to resist the violence later in his life came from his mother’s prayers. 

Before Ordination he had been conscripted in the First World War and had studied in Rome to be ordained in Santa Maria Maggiore.  At 36 in 1934 he was appointed the youngest bishop in the world and on 7th December 1937 Archbishop Stepinac took over the diocese.  The present Pope, Benedict XVI, wrote, “Alojzije was well aware of the difficult circumstances facing the Church and the Catholic faithful in Yugoslavia.  In the Yugoslavia that was created as one country after World War 1 there were mutually opposite parts with a strong anti-Catholic attitude.”

He knew that his service as a bishop meant sacrifice to renounce one’s self and placed himself in God’s hands.  Throughout his life he raised his voice against any injustice, staunchly resisted Fascism and Nazism.  With his own personal advocacy he managed to save at least seven thousand Serb children and personally saved ten percent of the Jewish population in Zagreb.

In May 1945 Croatia once again became part of Yugoslavia under a Communist Government.  On 17th May Archbishop Stepinac was arrested and in the next month Tito demanded that the local Church be separated from Rome. 

In the ensuing conflict with the State he asserted that he had done everything to resolve the conflict in a peaceful way, but if martyrs are necessary ‘I am the first to be prepared to suffer.  I do not intend to attack the Government for any political motives, but solely to defend the Catholic Church and faith’.

Throughout his imprisonment and later house arrest in his home village he showed a strong determination to live and speak for the truth.  While imprisoned in Lepoglava he said, “I am pleased to suffer for the Catholic Church.  I am prepared to die for her at any moment”, and all this he did to his last drop of blood because of his constant burning love of Jesus Christ and of his people.

In Blessed Alojzije Stepinac and the martyrs of Croatia we have a shining example put before us that faithfulness to God, to our religion, to prayer, to family life and to truth are the only things which will bring us happiness.  No matter what the consequences he was prepared to suffer because it was God’s will for him.  Other bishops said, he gave us the strength to persevere.

Blessed Alojzije Stepinac makes the same invitation to teach of us – to persevere in a modern, secular society in the faith of Jesus Christ.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.