A Vow of Silence
Did gold stolen by Croatian fascists reach the Vatican?
Other reports mention Ustashas meeting with Vatican officials or even living in the Vatican. The British Foreign Office reported in January 1947 that Pavelic himself, by that time a wanted war criminal, was living "within the Vatican City." An earlier report by Gowen, in October 1946, noted that Pavelic was in Rome and in contact with Draganovic.
Documents include accounts of Ustashas being hidden at the pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo and being seen driving in Rome in cars with Vatican license plates. The recently declassified Golik memo reports that Ustashas ate at the papal mess and that Father Golik was "declared to be in close contact with the Vatican."
The Vatican's tolerance of the Ustasha during the war was no secret. On the recommendation of Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac--who had blessed Pavelic at the opening of the Croatian parliament--the pope established informal diplomatic relations with the independent state of Croatia, and his envoy made regular rounds of Ustasha headquarters. In 1941 and in 1943, at a time when his excesses were known, Pavelic was granted two private audiences with Pius XII. The pope explained that he received the Ustasha leader simply as a Catholic, not as head of the Croatian state. The pontiff's decision was widely reported--and widely deplored--at the time. In July 1941, Francis D'Arcy Osborne, the British ambassador to the Vatican, wrote: "[Pius's] reception of Pavelic . . . has done more to damage his reputation in this country than any other act since the war began."
Bound to silence. What all this intelligence means is at the heart of the State Department-led investigation. Vatican officials insist they are hiding nothing because they have nothing to hide. But they say they cannot allow outside researchers free access to their archives because the collection contains sensitive personnel files. As a general rule, the Vatican releases church documents only after about 75 years. "I am bound to silence," said the Rev. Marcel Chappin of the Vatican Secretariat of State, when pressed to comment. Chappin said that the Vatican has already published a voluminous account of its role in World War II, including a discussion of the controversy surrounding Pius XII, who kept silent on the Nazi atrocities because he believed provocation of the Nazis would lead to more persecution and because he considered the greater enemy to be atheistic communism. Vatican defenders note that the church saved tens of thousands of Jews during the war, and they urge that current suspicions be viewed in the context of the chaotic times: Refugees were streaming into Vatican City after the war, and it is quite possible that funds intended for these refugees were used to help war criminals without the pope's knowledge.
"The question is what did the Vatican's own leadership know?" says William Slaney, the State Department's historian and author of the Nazi gold reports. "We want the Vatican . . . to deal with [its] share of this dreadful event."
The Rome connection Istituto San Gironlamo--a Roman Catholic seminary on Via Tomacelli about 1 mile from the Vatican--served as a safe house where fleeing Croatian war criminals received money, shelter, and forged passports immediately after World War II. [Map labels] CROATIA, Zagreb, Jasenovac concentration camp, GERMANY, SPAIN, Atlantic Ocean, ITALY, Rome, Genoa, Mediterranean Sea, Rome, Via Tomacelli, Vatican City, St. Peter's Basilica, Tiber River [Map is not available.]
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