– Bosko S. Vukcevich –
On August 6, 1944, Tito flew to Caserta, Italy to converse with Gen. Wilson and Gen. Alexander about military matters. He also talked with Winston Churchill, who was the instrumental architect of installing Tito on the Yugoslav throne. They talked about the political structure of postwar Europe. Tito shrewdly deceived Churchill by telling him he did not intend to impose communism in Yugoslavia. That would be contrary to the intention of the other European countries!
On August 9, 1944, Tito secretly visited the Vatican and Basilica of Saint Peter. The visit with the Pope was carefully planned to go unnoticed by the world media and not to disturb his main military protectors, the Serbs. On the same day, Tito sent letters to Marko (Alexander Rankovich) and to Bevc (Edward Kardelj), without mentioning his visit to the Holy See.
On August 11, 1944, the Italian ambassador at the Holy See informed his ministry of foreign affairs that the newspaper reported the Yugoslav officer’s visit to the Church of Saint Peter. On the 9th the Vatican also announced that Marshal Tito and his guard had visited the Basilica of Saint Peter, obviously incognito. Nothing more. On August 12 the Italian embassy at the Holy See offered more information:
On August 9, 1944, five military automobiles accompanied by a camionette holding British policemen armed with machine guns stopped at the stairs of the Basilica. About twenty Yugoslav officers came out. Some of them were in military uniforms, and they surrounded one of them who was most authoritative. Later he was recognized as Marshal Tito.
The group, about seven or eight policemen, all with machine guns kept ready to fire, went upstairs to the Basilica. Before the group entered the church, on the priest’s demand everyone except Tito had to lay down their weapons. Some newspaper photographers followed them, but it was forbidden to take any photographs.
Early in the afternoon, Marshal Tito and his guard left the Basilica.1
Italian political and military authorities investigated why Tito and his representatives had visited the Vatican. His representatives had to explain why some Catholic priests had been killed by Tito’s liberation army! Tito’s representatives tried to convince the Vatican that despite this, Tito held the Catholic church in high esteem and desired to maintain a cordial relationship with her.
In conclusion, the Italian ambassador states, Tito representatives’ visits to the Vatican were not the first.2 On that secret mission to the Vatican in August 1944 Tito was accompanied by Brig. Fitzroy Maclean, the head of the British mission at Tito’s headquarters; Maj. Gen. Ivan Rukavina; Lt. Col. Jefto Shashich; the translator Augustinich-Humo; and Tito’s personal escort, Capt. Nikola Prlja. On August 10, Radio Vatican briefly mentioned Tito’s visit to Rome.3
The assertion of Miladin Milatovich, Tito’s ambassador to Rome, that Tito did not contact the Holy See was unfounded, says Bulajich.
What about Edward Kocbek, a Slovenian who submitted a memorandum to the Holy See? Tito gave instructions in advance, and the advice was passed on to Kocbek by his compatriot Edward Kardelj. Kocbek was chosen as a former Catholic seminarian whom the Vatican could trust. The National Committee for Yugoslav Liberation had approved the memorandum. It expressed the desire for reconciliation and the sincere cooperation of Tito’s Communist party with the Vatican for the mutual benefit of Yugoslav Catholics and the Vatican. The Vatican was pleased with those contacts, even though the new Yugoslav representatives were Communists. Old Vatican tactics and diplomacy dictate never closing the door completely to anyone if they might be beneficial to the Vatican’s goals.
How and why did Milatovich even come in contact with Krunislav Draganovich, a notorious Ustasha and war criminal? It raises many questions. Draganovich was sent to Italy by Archbishop Stepinac. Through the Vatican he was to try to save Ustasha lives after the war. Did Milatovich as a member of the Yugoslav military mission know who Draganovich was and about his activities to break Yugoslav unity, for which Milatovich was allegedly fighting?
In 1971 Tito visited Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. They were scheduled to discuss a project for the formation of a Sub-Danube federation in which Croatia would have the role of “Catholic perivoj” (poetic — “park”). Prof. Vlade Koshutich, a member of the board of the Association of Serbian Writers, reports on the content of Tito’s conversation with the pope. The secret of the conversation came to the public through confidential Catholic sources in Italy. As documented, Tito secretly paid visits to either Pope Pius XII or to Pope John II, in his capacity as secretary of the Yugoslav Communist Party (YCP) or as Yugoslav president. Tito continually tried to please the Vatican, while he was extremely cautious not to arouse suspicion among non-Catholics in Yugoslavia.
Was it permissible for Tito, who was at the top of the Yugoslav party hierarchy, to publicly or secretly visit any pope? Was such behavior insubordinate to international Communist policy and discipline?
Bulajich complained that the Vatican failed to allow its archives from that period to be opened. Historians like Bulajich have the right to ask what has been hidden about those secret meetings behind the back of the Yugoslav people!
Right after the war Tito visited Zagreb. He had expressed his desire to meet with Catholic authorities to consolidate the relationship between the new Yugoslav government and the Croatian Catholic church. At a meeting on June 2, 1945, Bishop Salis-Seewis greeted Tito and told him the Catholic church could work quietly and without any interference to lead souls on the path of truth and God’s justice for the benefit of the entire country. Tito replied in a moderate and friendly tone, emphasizing his desire to work together on a proposal to guarantee the position of the Catholic church in Croatia. Tito emphasized the Catholic church needed to be closer to the people than it was, meaning it should be more loyal to the Yugoslav community than to the Croatian state.4 Tito treated the Serbian Orthodox church in quite a different way, as has already been discussed in previous chapters.
During World War II, Tito was praised and supported as a champion of democracy, liberty, and human rights by the Western Allies, especially by the Western liberal press, the BBC, British prime minister Churchill, and some British SOE agents who worked for the Comintern. Those influential forces brought Tito to the helm of the Yugoslav ship. Those influential forces brought Tito to the helm of the Yugoslav ship. He was not elevated by the Yugoslav people, especially the Serbs who under Mihailovich had broken with him in 1941 because Tito had begun an internal revolution against multiple occupiers in the Serbian lands.
After the war the Western Allies continued to support Tito, economically, militarily, and politically, to stay in power against the will of the majority of Yugoslav people. As the former British foreign secretary Lord David Owen said, he ruled his country with an iron fist. Some Westerners still condemn Serbian leadership as Communist though they themselves brought and kept Tito and his associates in their lucrative and corruptive positions.
Croatian and Slovenian leaders have been even more flexible than the Serbian leadership. They have been trying to protect their Separatist national interests regardless of Yugoslavia’s national interests.
The U.S. ambassador in Belgrade, Zimmermann, noted there was more freedom in Serbia than in Croatia and Slovenia.
Jelena Lovric, a Croatian journalist, says the gloomy outlook for the free media in Croatia is not yet at an end. His article referred to the Split newspaper Free Dalmatia, which finally fell under Tudjman’s supervision, though Tudjman claims Croatia is the most democratic country in the world.5
(Vukcevich, Bosko S. Tito: Architect of Yugoslav Disintegration. 1. ed. Rivercross Publ, 1994, pp. 417-419, 474.)
Notes
1 R. Ambasciata d’Italia presso la Santa Sede, telespresso no. 303206 Rome August 12, 1944, cited in Milan Bulajich, Mission of the Vatican in the ISC (Belgrade: Politika, 1992), p. 815.
2 R. Ambasciata d’Italia presso la Santa Sede, telespresso no. 654534, Rome, September 29, 1944, cited in Bulajich, op. cit., p. 815.
3 Arso Milatovic, “What Actually Happened in Rome,” Nin (Belgrade), no. 1539, June 24, 1980.
4 Bulajich, op. cit., p. 856.
5 Jelena Lovric, “Drawing in Gloves,” Monitor (Podgorica), no. 123, February 26, 1993, pp. 36–37.