Catholic World News News Feature

NEW LIGHT ON DEATH OF CROATIAN PRELATE April 09, 1996

by Bruno Saric EWTN News

ZAGREB (CWN) -- The Yugoslav secret police (UDBA) burned the heart of the revered Croatian Catholic leader, Cardinal Alojzije Stepanic, and attempted to destroy his bodily remains.

"Why was the Cardinal's Heart Burned?" is the headline of an article in the January 1996 issue of Glas Koncila. The article concerns a letter from the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints that grants permission for the life and death of the servant of God Alojzije Stepinac to be presented as martyrdom, based upon available documents and testimony.

This article, for the first time, reports to the general public the suspicion that Cardinal Stepinac had been systematically poisoned during his imprisonment in Lepoglava. It also reveals the heretofore unknown fact that the Yugoslav secret police (UDBA) burned Stepinac's heart at the time the body was embalmed.

Documents and testimony reveal that the Yugoslav Communist authorities were considering liquidating Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb, especially after the famous pastoral letter from all the bishops in the former Yugoslavia dated September 20, 1945. The Yugoslav authorities attempted to dislodge Stepinac from his position as the archbishop of Zagreb; there were threats of physical liquidation. According to the article, Cardinal Stepinac's personal physicians are of the opinion that his illness, involving the multiplication of red blood cells, was in consequence of treatment he received in Lepoglava, where he was systematically poisoned.

The article refers to a 1993 autopsy of Stepinac in the presence of delegates from the Church among the Croats and the Holy See, showing that the cardinal was buried without a heart and that embalming had not been performed immediately after death, as requested by the Church authorities. Instead, formaldehyde and carbolic acid were injected into the body, causing processes that contributed to decomposition. Since the cardinal's body was embalmed and the internal organs removed, Archbishop Franjo Seper of Zagreb requested that physicians give Stepinac's heart to the Church. When the Yugoslav secret police learned of this, they confiscated the heart from the Church authorities and burned it at the headquarters of the secret police in Zagreb, according to testimony from the distinguished Biblical scholar Dr. Celestin Tomic.