Pope Francis
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
William Dorich
An Open LetterApril 21, 2014
His Holiness Pope Francis
Apostolic Palace
Vatican City 00120
Your Holiness:
As a double victim of Balkan genocide, I write this Open Letter to appeal to your humanitarian nature exhibited in recent public appearances.
In 1941, in the village of Vojnic, Croatia where my father was born, 99 Serbians were locked inside their church and burned to the ground by Nazi Croatians and their Catholic priests—17 of those victims were my relatives. In 1995, during “Operation Storm” in Croatia when 230,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed, the last 5 relatives of my name were too old and too sick to flee, I was notified a month later by the Red Cross that they were found with their throats slit. I have spent a lifetime of sorrow inflicted on me by the Catholic priesthood— thousands of victims like me deserve justice, not 16 years of legal obstruction.
In 1995, President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia bulldozed that Serbian church site in Vojnic along with the Jasenovac Concentration Camp and adjoining museum to erase from this earth the evidence of the brutal killing of over 700,000 Serbs, 40,000 Jews, 60,000 Roma and 90,000 Serbian children under the age of ten. This makes today’s homosexual crimes of your priesthood pale in comparison.
In 1944 the word “Genocide” was coined, the following chilling words were spoken in testimony by Antun Miletich, a Croatian Jasenovac survivor: “There is not a pen capable of describing the horror and terror of the atmosphere at Jasenovac. It surpasses any human fantasy. Imagine Hell, the Inquisition, a terror more dreadful than any that ever before existed anywhere, run by bloodthirsty wild animals whose most hidden and disgusting instincts had come to the surface in a way never before seen in human beings—and still you have not said enough.”
After WWII, Croatian President Ante Pavelic, fled through Fr. Krunoslav Draganovic’s “Vatican Ratline,” the escape route for 430 Catholic priests who fled to Argentina—priests whose hands were covered in the blood of their Serbian victims. Ante Pavelic became the “security advisor” to Juan Peron who issued 34,000 visas to Croatian war criminals. Your Holiness grew up in Argentina and you became a priest in the 1950s when these war criminals flooded Argentina and were embraced by Juan Peron, his wife Evita and others in elite Catholic Church circles who protected and defended these war criminals from the clutches of the Nuremberg Tribunal, or from any prosecutions.
“Hope lives when people remember,” are the powerful words of Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal that are prominently displayed at the Holocaust Museum in Beverly Hills, California. Serbian Orthodox Christians will surely find it hopeless that the Vatican has managed to bury their war crimes along with their victims. For 70 years the Vatican has hid the evidence of your Genocide and forbade historians access to Vatican wartime archives. History will prove your deceptions a betrayal of Jesus Christ and his commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill (Exodus 20:13).
I remind your Holiness of the powerful words of Avro Manhattan, a fellow Catholic in his 1965 book, Vatican Imperialism in the 20th Century. “The lessons we have learned from the emergence of the independent State of Croatia, wherethe religious and political totalitarianism of Catholicism was not only made to work, but put to death more than one million Serbian Orthodox Christians, should never be forgotten. For it happened in our times, when the Catholic church—then, as now, posing as a victim of religious intolerance—was clamoring for freedom, while at the same time suppressing that same freedom for which she was vociferating so loudly in a tiny state where she had set up her kind of freedom, Catholic freedom: i.e. freedom for herself to eliminate whatever and whoever dared to resist her embrace.”
1941, Fr. Ivan Raguz yelled from a Croatian Catholic pulpit: “Kill all Serbs and Jews, including children, so that not even the seeds of the beasts are left.”Therein we clearly see the foundation, the pretext and the horror of Jasenovac.
As a double victim of genocide at the hands of Catholic priests and their Nazi minions, I realized by 1998 that I would never receive justice for the deaths of my family and relatives or justice for any of the tens of thousands of victims your priesthood created. I therefore became the first Plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against the Vatican Bank and Dr. Jon Levy, my attorney, has been in contact with Cardinal Pell. Who, like other Vatican contacts has proven feckless.
Dr. Levy has uncovered a Vatican Bank connection to looted assets not only from Serbia, but also from Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Ukraine. Dr. Levy has numerous irrefutable documents that attest to the Vatican money laundering of the spoils of the Holocaust. The Vatican Bank was involved in the conspiracy in moving these highly secreted funds from the Vatican Bank to Swiss Banks who moved the funds controlled by Ante Pavelic to banks in Argentina. Today, those funds represent several billion dollars, not including the outrageous religious art theft during WWII in the Balkans. In the mid 1970s the Vatican returned to the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate a number of priceless manuscripts and centuries-old icons stolen from destroyed Serbian churches in Croatia—clear evidence the Vatican was a partner in these crimes.
The statute of Limitations never expires on murder. The Vatican has insultingly pretended that the statute does not apply to the priesthood, an unholy concept considering the murder of over one million victims in former Yugoslavia was perpetrated by ordained Roman Catholic priests.
After 70 years of Vatican secrecy I have been driven to resort to this Open Letter in order to gain your attention and to exposure the contempt the Vatican has shown to my legal council. I am therefore again making public these crimes against humanity and demanding that the Vatican Bank finally make restitution.
Your Holiness, if your compassion is indeed sincere, then I ask that you go beyond your public commitment in resolving the problems of homosexuality in your priesthood and that you guarantee you will open Vatican archives from WWII and that you make every effort that Cardinal Pell and the Vatican Bank begin dealing with my attorney on an honest level. Compensate the thousands of victims and provided the survivors with a public apology and beg our forgiveness. The Vatican and its Bank are not above the laws of man or the laws of the church and your unholy silence is sinful.
It is time for criminal Catholics to confess and Repent!
Considering the dissemination of this Open Letter is going to the general public who will have no historical context of the depth of these Vatican war crimes, I am including a brief example of the 430 Roman Catholic priests in Croatia who committed these hideous crimes with their own hands then fled through the “Vatican Ratline” for Argentina where they escaped justice:
God have mercy.
I look forward to your response.
Very truly yours,
William Dorich, Publisher/Author
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
Author of the 1991 book, Serbian Genocide 1941-45; Kosovo (1992); A Brief History of Serbian Music, (1997); Hilandar’s Octocentenary, (2003); Serbia: Faces& Places, (2011). His current book is: Memoirs of a Serbian American Dissident (2013). William Dorich is the recipient of The Order of St. Sava, the highest recognition bestowed on a layperson by the Holy Synod of Serbian Orthodox Bishops; An Award of Merit from the Serbian Bar Association of America and a Humanitarian Award from RAS, the International Serbian Organization. He was a correspondent for The American Srbobran for 15 years and his articles appeared in the Washington Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and numerous Serbian websites such as Britic, The Serbian Magazine of Great Britain.
ENC: Jasenovac Then & Now: A Conspiracy of Silence
ARSAMOVIC, Dr. ANTUN
Catholic bishop of Djakovo. Decorated by Fascist Ante Pavelic. Used terror to force several thousand Orthodox Serbs to convert to Catholicism. Took over the Serbian Orthodox churches in his jurisdictional area and ordered them destroyed such as the Serbian churches in Bracevci, Poucje, Depsin, Tenje, Dalj, Kucanci, Budimci, Poganovci, Borovo Selo, Trpinje, Pacetin, Cepin, Trnjani, Klokocevik, and Topolje. He followed the directives in the testament“The Return to the Faith of our Fathers,” written and published by St. Jeronimo in Zagreb, which was under the direct control of Archbishop Stepinac.
BLAZEVIC, GRGA
Catholic priest in Bosanski Novi, where he organized a concentration camp for Serbians and made himself the commander. Serbs were arrested and slaughtered in this camp on his orders. He insisted that he was doing what Archbishop Stepinac wanted and expected of him. For his work on behalf of the “Croatian cause,” Fascist Ante Pavelic decorated him.
CULINA, Fra ANSELMO
Catholic priest who personally killed inmates at Jasenovac. He committed all of his murders with a small knife attached to his wrist that he liked to show to his victims before killing them. He carried this knife with him at all times, even when holding mass for Croat soldiers. Fascist Ante Pavelic decorated him.
DJURIC, ANTE
Catholic priest in Divusa. Organized bands of killers and sent them to various Serbian villages to slaughter the men, women, and children. He instructed them specifically not to spare women and children. After the killings, he absolved all of the murderers of their sins. He was an extreme sadist. He would arrestSerbs, locking them inside his stable where he tortured them for hours before killing them. He announced from the church pulpit that the Serbian question in Croatia could only be solved with the “steel broom” (the gun). In his journal, he noted that on April 14, 1941 (four days after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia) he ask for instructions from Archbishop Stepinac and continuedin his journal: “I met with the leaders of all the surrounding parishes, and we agreed what we needed to do.” The following day he arrested a number of Serbian women, forced them to undress and ride naked on horses through the Croatian villages in his area. He then slaughtered them.
GUDELJ, Don MARTIN
Catholic priest in Opuzen. Called on all Croats in his church sermons to begin digging Serbian graves. He organized groups of killers that went with him through the Serbian villages in his jurisdiction, killing the Serbs they found there and pillaging their properties. He killed the children by beheading them with a bayonet. He personally slaughtered 450 men, women, and children. Together with Fra Dr. Bilobrk, he committed great massacres of Serbs on June 28, 1941, Vidovdan—a religious national Serbian holiday.
KAURINOVIC, Msgr. JOSIP
Catholic priest in Prijedor. Special representative of His Holiness, the Pope. Personally participated in the mass killings of Serbs, including women and children. Preferred killing Serbs to expelling them. He insisted that they could, conceivably return some day to their homes. He personally arrested Serbian Orthodox priests in the area, tortured them, dismembered them, and murdered them. Fascist Ante Pavelic decorated him.
KRALIK, FRANJO
Catholic priest and chief-editor of the Catholic magazine “Katolicki Tjednik,” through which he promoted an unrelenting hatred toward the Serbs. In his writings, he insisted that Croatia could not be cleansed of Serbs in a “nice way” and added: “Pope Gregory VII didn’t clean up the Catholic Church in some nice way, but with force.”
PALJUG, MATO
Catholic priest and professor of Theology in Bjelovar who insisted that all Serbs in Croatia must be executed. Ruthlessly promoted hatred toward Serbs, especially toward Serbian Orthodox priests. He was later promoted to the position of instructor at the military school in Zagreb, where he worked more closely with Archbishop Stepinac and continued to promote hatred toward the Serbs.
PERIC, Dr. SRECKO
Catholic priest from the Monastery of Gorica, near Livno. About twenty friars from this monastery participated with Peric in slaughtering about 5,000 Serbs from the Livno area. Dr. Peric first arrested the Serbian men from Livno and took them to the Koprivnica, between Bugojno and Rupres. He had them brutalized and executed. Some were tortured to death. He then arrested their mothers, wives, and children and ended their lives in the same way. The women were raped, their breasts were cut off—children were dismembered and their eyes were gouged out. The killers then cut off the heads of the children and threw them into the laps of their distraught mothers who screamed for mercy—their anguished cries encouraged further violence until they were slaughtered.
SCHOLZ, Fra SIDONIJE
Franciscan priest who murdered Serbian Orthodox priest Djordje Bogic of Nasice after nailing him to a tree and pulled out his beard and ripped skin from his body torturing him to death. He cut off Bogic’s nose and tongue, then cut him open the full length of his stomach and wrapped his intestines around his neck. Fascist Ante Pavelic decorated him.
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