Brendan Rizzo:
"Extra extra! The Catholic Church supports fascism! More at eleven."
Oh god, don't remind me.
The Catholic Church in Croatia is absolutely atrocious in that regard. Even now they keep railing on and on at the top of their lungs about the HORRORS of communism and how it was the darkest, DARKEST thing to happen to Croatia and the world ever. Sure, the commies weren't very nice to them, but the Church blows it ridiculously out of proportion. Oh, and the commies aren't gone, no sir! They're still everywhere, conspiring to keep good Croats and Catholics down. They (the priesthood) even believe that the old communist secret services still exist and do these things.
The above is not an exaggeration. This is what the Catholic clergy in Croatia actually professes to believe. Seriously, I shit you not. They said it on record, many times.
Oh, and since the Church is so concerned about communist human rights abuses, you'd expect them to scream at the top of their lungs about the crimes committed under fascism, right?
But no. All in all, they said nary a whisper about the atrocities of the Nazis and the Ustaše. It basically boils down to a couple of shy condemnations admitting that, yes, these regimes "were a bad thing" (not their direct words, rather my summation of the strength of them). Meanwhile, Ante Pavelic (the Croatian clone of Hitler, in every way that matters) still gets a mass 'for his soul'* once a year by a local priest, with no condemnation whatsoever by said priest's superiors. Of course, 'for his soul' shouldn't be taken to mean that they're praying for him because he has sinned like few people ever to walk the Earth... no, they're praying in his glory. This is the moment when we should remember that these people claim to be followers of Jesus Christ and his teachings.
* (which makes the critical mistake of assuming he had one, even if you believe in the existence of souls. Pavelic was every bit the complete monster that dear ol' Adolf was.)
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