The Franciscans were among Pavelik's most devoted partners in crime.

        "Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres. Many went around routinely armed and performed their murderous acts with zeal.  A Father Bozidar Bralow, known for the machine gun that was his constant companion, was accused of performing a dance around the bodies of 180 massacred Serbs at Alipasin-Most.  Individual Franciscans killed, set fire to homes, sacked villages, and laid waste the Bosnian countryside at the head of Ustashe bands.  In September of 1941, an Italian reporter wrote of a Franciscan he had witnessed south of Banta Luka urging on a band of Ustashe with his crucifix.
        In the Foreign Ministry archive in Rome there is a photographic record of atrocities: of women with breasts cut off, gouged eyes, genitals mutilated; and the instruments of butchery: knives, axes, meat hooks." [ Hitler's Pope, p. 254.]

        "The Ustasha publication, Novi List, July 24, 1941, published this sentiment from Franciscan priest / pastor Mate Mogus, from Ubdina:
        "Until now we have worked for the Catholic faith with the prayer book and with the cross.  Now the time has come to work with rifle and revolver." [ ibid; p. 131 ]
        At a meeting in Udbina on June 13, 1941, he [Friar Mate Mogus] gave the following homily:
        'Look, people, at these 16 brave Ustashi, who have 16,000 bullets and who will kill 16,000 Serbs, after which we will divide among us in a brotherly manner the Mutilic and Krbava fields'— a speech which was the signal for the beginning of the slaughter of Serbs in the district of Udbina.

        Ante Pavelic wrote to Pius XII:
        "Holy Father!  Since divine providence has made it possible that I take over the helm of my people and my homeland, I am firmly determined and wish fervently that the Croatian people, faithful to their laudable past, also in the future remain loyal to the holy apostle Peter and his followers and that our homeland, filled with the law of the New Testament, become Christ's kingdom.  In this truly great work, I fervently ask the aid of Your Holiness.  As such aid I first see that Your Holiness with Your highest apostolic authority recognize our state, then that You deign as quickly as possible to send Your representative, who will help me with Your fatherly advice, and finally that he impart to me and my people the apostolic blessing.  Kneeling at the feet of Your Holiness.  I kiss your sacred right hand as the obedient son of Your Holiness". . .  (ibid., p. 78)
       While the Vatican could not be so brazen as to grant to the Ustasha - NDH (Croatia) de jure (legal) recognition — it yet maintained recognition of and diplomacy with the exiled Yugoslavian government — it did grant the NDH de facto recognition in a couple of ways: In August 1941, the papal legate Ramiro Marcone was sent from Rome to Zagreb, providing a constant Vatican representative in the NDH.  The NDH sent its representative Dr. Nikola Rusinovic to the Vatican, who was later replaced by Prince Erwin Lobkowicz.  Thus, informal diplomatic relations were maintained.  Also, in January 1942, Stepinac was appointed by Pius XII as military vicar 'sine titulo' for the Croatian army."

        "Orthodox worshippers, when not dispatched to concentration camps, suffered the same fate as their clergy.  Congregations, unless willing to change their religion, were not only persecuted, hunted down and arrested; but, at times, besides being massacred by the Ustashi bayonets or machine guns, they were killed within their own churches.

        There were instances even when they were burned alive within them.  To terrorize the population into becoming Catholic, the Ustashi very often hanged lay Orthodox Leaders and their Orthodox parish priests during mass executions under the very eyes of the faithful.  This was one of the most tangible methods of 'persuasion' whenever the Orthodox proved obdurate.
        Those who escaped with their lives were sent to concentration camps, while about 700 that is, one quarter of the total number of Orthodox priests — were murdered by the Ustashi in this manner."

        "These were not isolated instances.  The Ustashi more often than not massacred all the inhabitants of Serb villages, callously torturing and killing even children, and then setting the villages on fire.  In the village of Susnjari, for instance, the Ustashi, after having killed most of the inhabitants, led away about twenty surviving children, whom they tied to the threshold of a big barn, which was then set on fire.  Most of the children, of an average age of about ten, were burned alive.  The few who survived, horribly scorched, were eventually killed.  Eye-witnesses testified to similar occurrences:
        In the village of Gorevac, on September 13, 194i, children of about 3 years of age were impaled.  In some places mothers threw themselves down with children in their arms, and one stake perforated mother and child.  Some young girls had their breasts tied or cut, others had their hands made to pass through them.  Men had their ears and noses sawn away, and eyes had been uprooted from their sockets."
[from http://www.reformation.org/holoc5.html ]

        "The Nazis, who for a time were posted in Croatia, were so horrified at the Ustashi atrocities that they set up special commissions to investigate them.  The Orthodox Church of Serbia, in fact, appealed directly to the Nazi General Dulkeman to intervene and stop the Ustashi horrors.
        The Germans and the Italians managed to restrain the Ustashi while they were under their supervision.  When the Nazis left Croatia, however, the Ustashi multiplied their atrocities, unreprimanded by the Government.  Since the latter's policy was one of total elimination of the Orthodox Serbian population via forcible conversions, expulsion, or straightforward massacre.
        Victims were executed in groups without trial on bridges and then thrown into the river.  In May 1941 the Ustashi besieged Glina.  Having gathered together all the Orthodox males of over fifteen years of age from Karlovac, Sisak and Petrinja, they drove them outside the town and killed 600 of them with guns, knives and sledge hammers."
        [ from http://www.reformation.org/holoc4.html ]

        "The prime mover behind this Ustasha activity in Rome was the secretary of the College, Father Dr. Krunoslav Stefano Dragonovic, who was also an Ustasha colonel and former official of the Croat 'Ministry for Internal Colonization,' the agency responsible for the confiscation of Serb property in Bosnia and Hercegovina.
        Regarded by U. S.  intelligence officers as Ante Pavelic's 'alter ego,' the Croatian-born Father Dragonovic had been a Professor of Theology at Zagreb University.  In 1943 he went to Rome allegedly as the representative of the Croatian Red Cross, but probably to coordinate Ustasha affairs in Italy.  Taking advantage of contacts inside the International Red Cross and other refugee and relief organizations, Dragonovic helped Ustasha fugitives emigrate illegally to South America by providing temporary shelter and false identity documents, and by arranging onward transport, primarily to Argentina.
        U. S.  intelligence reports make much of Father Dragonovic's role in helping the Ustashi who sought protection in Rome after the War.  He was also reportedly entrusted with the safeguarding of the archives of the Ustasha Legation in Rome, which he hid somewhere in the Vatican, as well as with all the valuables brought out of Croatia by the fleeing Ustashi."

        A young Yugoslav by the name of Branko Bokun. . .  had been sent to Rome by one of Yugoslavia's intelligence chiefs to ask for the Vatican's intervention to stop the slaughter in Croatia.  Armed with a large file of documents, eye witness accounts and even photographs of the massacres, Bokun finally gained entrance into the Vatican Secretariat of State in September 1941. He wanted to deliver his file to Monsignor Giovanni Montini, Under Secretary of State for Ordinary Affairs, (the future Pope Paul VI) but could not gain an audience.  Bokun was told to leave his file and come back a week later, with the promise that `the Monsignor will give the matter careful consideration'.
        This was at the height of the worst atrocities and Pavelic had taken steps of his own to influence Vatican opinion.  He had dispatched Father Cherubino Seguic to Rome to counter the spreading horror with which the massacres were greeted in many Catholic circles.  Seguic soon discovered that the Ustashi regime was viewed by many as `a crowd of barbarians and cannibals'.  He promptly sought an audience with Montini, and recorded in his diary that the Vatican bureaucrat sought `full information on the events in Croatia', also confirming that the `calumnies' had reached the Monsignor's ears.'
        Father Seguic seems to have had a persuasive effect on Montini.  When Bokun returned to discuss his file detailing evidence of these `calumnies', he received short shrift from Montini's secretary.  Bokun was simply told that `the atrocities described in your file are the work of the Communists, but maliciously attributed to the Catholics'.  Bokun had the evidence but no access to Montini, while Seguic had no difficulty in presenting his side of the story."
        There is no doubt that Montini was well informed of the true situation, for on a number of occasions he castigated Croatia's representatives to the Holy See.  While Montini would begin with harsh words, invariably these sessions concluded with assurances that the Holy Father would assist Catholic Croatia.'
        The Pope's own attitude towards the murderous Ustashi leader was more than benign neglect.  When Pavelic asked for another audience with the Holy Father in May 1943, he was assured by Secretary of State Maglione that `there were no difficulties attached to the Poglavnik's visit to the Holy Father except that he could not be received as a sovereign'.  Pius himself promised to give Pavelic his personal blessing again.  By this time, the Holy See possessed abundant evidence of the atrocities committed by his regime.
        How ever, senior Vatican officials, including Pius XII, regularly received his `unofficial' diplomatic representative who called him self the `Croatian Ambassador'.  The Pope also continued to receive other senior officials and delegations, turning his face away from their countless victims."
        Pavelic's record was well known.  On one occasion a visiting Italian Fascist journalist had been granted an interview with the Poglavnik.  Noticing what appeared to be a large bowl of oysters, he had asked Pavelic whether they were from the Dalmatian coast.  He was shocked when the dictator replied that they were forty pounds of Serbian eyes sent to him by his loyal Ustashi.
        On another occasion, Pavelic held discussions with Hitler in Berlin.  In a strange reversal of roles, he castigated the Fuehrer about the `lenient' treatment of German Jews, boasting that in comparison he had completely solved the Jewish question in Croatia while some remained alive in the Third Reich." [ "Unholy Trinity, pp.70-74 ]

Contents
• A Preliminary Note on the Historical Background of the Present Yugoslav Crisis
• Foreword to the American Edition
• Foreword to the Second German Edition
• Foreword to the First German Edition
• Editor's Preface
• Introduction
• I. The Balkan as a bulwark against (Eastern) Orthodoxy
• The Vatican's Attitude toward the Yugoslav Peoples since the Nineteenth Century
• Initial Contacts between Pius XII and Pavelic
• The Participation of Roman Catholic Priests in the Fascist Attacks on the Yugoslav Army
• Roman Catholic Dignitaries Welcome the Destruction of Yugoslavia and the Creation of the NDH
• Decorations for Roman Catholic Priests for Meritorious Service to the Ustasha State
• Pope Pius XII's Special Attention to Pavelic and the Ustasha State

• II. Massacres among dissenters in the "Kingdom of God"
• The Ustasha State: The State of Catholicism
• The Participation of Vatican Clergy in the Mass Murders of Serbs
• The Massacre in the Karitska Jama Gorge
• The Massacre in the Church at Glina
• The Massacre in the Village of Urije
• Documents on Massacres under the Leadership of Priests
• III. The death camp Jasenovac
• Decrees Concerning Sending People to the Camp
• The Various Methods of Killing in Jasenovac
• The Franciscan Miroslav Filipovic, One of the Commandants of Jasenovac
• The "Holy Masses" of Ivica Brkljacic
• The Mass Murder of Children
• IV. The pope's attitude toward the massacres
• Reports about the Intimate Conversations with the Pope and His Closest Collaborators
• The Role of the Papal Legate Marcone
• Eyewitness Testimonies about the Compulsory Conversions
• The Interrogation of the Accused Alojzije Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb
• Cloisters and Churches as Ustasha Bases
• V. The pope's loyalty to the Ustashe even after the collapse of the NDH
• The Efforts of the Vatican to Save the NDH
• Archbishop Stepinac Preserves the Ustasha Booty
• Andrija Artukovic: "I Was Guided by the Moral Principles of the Catholic Church."
• Two Secret Documents on Catholic Priests' Help in the Flight
• Afterword
• Appendix

Vladimir Dedijer, the Yugoslav historian and eyewitness, Tito biographer and President of the International Russell Tribunal, has documented for the first time and comprehensively one of the bloodiest and most unknown chapters of the Second World War: the bestial murder of 800.000 Orthodox Serbs in Ustasha-Croatia, the »Kingdom of God«, by henchmen of the Catholic Church between 1941 and 1943. Particularly since the beginning of the civil wars in Yugoslavia, whose roots and background are illuminated in great depth by this historical documentation, this work has increased its circulation considerably: the fourth revised German edition has been published by now.

»...in Catholic Croatia, the 'Kingdom of God', everyone who did not belong to the Catholic faith - for the most part Orthodox Serbs - was compelled to convert to Catholicism. Those who refused - as well as many who had already converted - were murdered, usually after prolonged torture in which the order of the day was the cutting off of noses, ears, or other body parts, or poking out eyes. Children were cut out of the bodies of pregnant women and subsequently beheaded; people were chopped to pieces before the eyes of loved ones, who were even forced to catch the spurting blood in a bowl, etc., to list only a few horrors as examples. These atrocities assumed such an extent that even German Nazis, who were not exactly sensitive in such matters, protested.
If this historical fact is little known where we are, another fact completely escapes our knowledge: the decisive involvement of the Vatican in these massacres. .«

The way the Croatian side is »burying the ghosts of the past« is tailor-made to thrill the hearts of the Catholic and the Green faction: the leader of the Croation regime, Tudjman, has meanwhile had Jasenovac levelled to the ground, destroyed all documents and declared it a »bird sanctuary«.