1943: Lojze Grozde, beatified Slovenian

ExecutedToday.com ^ | January 1st, 2011 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1943, Slovenian student Lojze Grozde was executed by communist partisans.

An ardent young Catholic, the 19-year-old Grozde was on his way from boarding school in Ljubljana in Italian-occupied Slovenia* to visit some relatives when he was stopped at a roadblock.

Partisans who found the devotional book The Imitation of Christ on his person were a mite hostile, since the Holy See was not exactly at loggerheads with fascism.

All of Yugoslavia had become one gigantic dirty war, and though individual Catholics might fall anywhere on the political spectrum, the institutional church did not shy from working with fascists, who had the virtue of sharing the See’s hatred of communism.....

[Angelino97]

the institutional church did not shy from working with fascists, who had the virtue of sharing the See’s hatred of communism

Since Bolsheviks had a habit of murdering Christian clergy and nuns, this was understandable.

[RedMonqey]

Playing footie with fascists was less dangerous than playing with communists.
Commies play for keeps!

[Dr. Sivana]

The Catholic Church under Pope Pius XI wasn’t exactly friendly with the Nazis. On March 14, 1937 “MIT BRENNENDER SORGE” was released, and that was aimed squarely at Hitler and the Nazis, which is why it is one of the few documents not released in Latin as its first language, but in German, lest the point be lost.

8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge.html

[jmacusa]

Four years earlier Pius signed a concordant with Hitler. That didn’t work out too well.

[Dr. Sivana]

Four years earlier Pius signed a concordant with Hitler. That didn’t work out too well.

Nor the one with Mussolini, nor the secret one with the USSR decades later.

It wasn't clear in 1933 exactly what Hitler was made of, and it would have been better had he behaved. Concordats like the one in 1933 don't necessarily mean you like the people you make it with, but an acknowledgement that they are a force to be reckoned with, as with the U.S. SALT agreements, the Red China talks, etc.

So, one could maintain that that Church "supported" Franco in Spain. At the time, the alternative was rule by Communists and Anarchists who seemed to specialize in torturing priests, nuns, and Catholics who would not go with the leftist program. In fact, the Church would have much preferred to be allied with a Carlist government in Spain, but that was no longer an option. Franco's and Salazar's brand of fascism was different than Hitler's, and Franco provided right of return of Jews from Germany, including Marranos. Spain's "non-belligerence" with Hitler was more acquiescence, The country was still reeling from her Civil War, and was in no position to resist the Nazis.