Aloysius Stepinac

Aloysius Viktor Stepinac was a Yugoslav Croat prelate of the Catholic Church. A cardinal, Stepinac served as Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death, a period which included the fascist rule of the Ustaše over the Axis puppet state the Independent State of Croatia from 1941 to 1945 during World War II. He was tried by the communist Yugoslav government after the war and convicted of treason and collaboration with the Ustaše regime. The trial was depicted in the West as a typical communist "show trial", and was described by The New York Times as biased against the archbishop. However, Professor John Van Antwerp Fine Jr. claims the trial was "carried out with proper legal procedure". In a verdict that polarized public opinion both in Yugoslavia and beyond, the Yugoslav authorities found him guilty on the charge of high treason, as well as complicity in the forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism. Stepinac advised individual priests to admit Orthodox believers to the Catholic Church if their lives were in danger, such that this conversion had no validity, allowing them to return to their faith once the danger passed. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, but served only five at Lepoglava before being transferred to house arrest with his movements confined to his home parish of Krašić.