Zagreb (IKA) – The president of the Justitia et Pax Commission of the Croatian Conference of Bishops, Bishop Vlado Košić, sent a letter of protest to the top executives of the American news agency CNN, regarding assertions made by its reporters about Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac during the broadcast of the funeral of Pope John Paul II. At the conclusion of the Mass in St. Peter’s Square, the reporter Christiane Amanpour spoke about the Pope’s canonization of saints and noted: “Some of them very controversial. I note that we saw the flag of Croatia, for instance. He elevated a Croatian to sainthood at a time when the Croatian fascists were almost aligned with the Catholic Church and had these terrible pogroms against the Serbs during World War II. These are controversial things that he’s done in the past.” Then John Allen added the following commentary: “Cardinal Stepinac, the Croatian you referred to, many people believe was unacceptably close to the Ustashi, a paramilitary group in Croatia aligned with the Nazis.”

In his letter of protest, Bishop Košić pointed out that the truth was completely different than portrayed by the CNN reporters and that Cardinal Stepinac had been consistently opposed to both the Ustasha and communist regimes. Bishop Košić quoted from a statement made by Cardinal Stepinac in the Zagreb Cathedral on October 25, 1942: “Every nation and every race has the right to a life consistent with human dignity … Therefore, the Catholic Church has always condemned, and today condemns, every injustice and all violence perpetrated in the name of class, racial or nationalistic theories … No one has the right to take it into his own hands to kill or harm members of other races or nations in any way.”

Bishop Košić also stated in his letter that Pope John Paul II, who himself had felt the weight of Nazi and communist terror, was well acquainted with the methodologies of totalitarian regimes, which asserted that their victims were actually criminals. It is precisely for this reason that the Pope restored the reputation of Cardinal Alozije Stepinac, a victim, by beatifying him in 1998.

The bishop pointed out that evidently the style of propaganda used by the communists, who called their terror “humanism” and asserted that their victims were executioners, was still alive and continues to deny the true status of the victims. Since CNN is synonymous with the free democratic world, noted Bishop Košić, it would be desirable for such a distinguished institution to verify the sources of its assertions in order to preserve its own credibility, and thereby avoid such inversions of the truth in the future.

Requesting a public apology from CNN for the blatant untruths asserted and a confirmation of this apology addressed to the Croatian Conference of Bishops, Bishop Košić noted that this would be necessary in order to prevent such a thing from happening again, not only in the case of Cardinal Stepinac but in the cases of any of the victims.