76 IVO BANAC
vodina and Bosnia and Herzegovina, with their significant Cath-
olic population, was hit hard by the Communist revolution that
immediately followed the Second World War.3 The Communists
executed at least five hundred Catholic priests and religious; de-
stroyed most Catholic institutions; banned practically all Catholic
publications; excluded religious instruction from schools; confis-
cated Church property; and, in 1946, arrested Archbishop Alojzije
Stepinac of Zagreb, the most senior Catholic prelate in Yugosla-
via, sentencing him to sixteen years of hard labor. After the 1948
break with the Soviet Bloc, the Yugoslav Communist leadership
in fact intensified the persecution of the Catholic Church, which
they viewed as their most determined internal enemy. In the early
1950s, the authorities promoted several regime-identified priests’
associations. 4
- On the Communist revolution in Yugoslavia, see Woodford D. McClellan,
“Postwar Political Evolution,” in Contemporary Yugoslavia: Twenty Years of Socialist
Experiment, ed. Wayne S. Vucinich (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1969), 119–53. On the Christian churches in Yugoslavia after World War II,
see Stella Alexander, Church and State in Yugoslavia since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979); see also Miroslav Akmadža, Katolička Crkva u komunističkoj
Hrvatskoj 1945–1980 (Zagreb and Slavonski Brod: Despot Infinitus and Hrvatski in-
stitut za povijest, 2013); Akmadža, Katolička crkva u Hrvatskoj i komunistički režim
1945–1966 (Rijeka: Otokar Keršovani, 2004); Jure Krišto, Katolička crkva u totalita-
rizmu 1945–1990: Razmatranja o Crkvi u Hrvatskoj pod komunizmom (Zagreb: Globus,
1997); Radmila Radić, Verom protiv vere: Država i verske zajednice u Srbiji 1945–1953
(Belgrade: Inis, 1995); Akmadža, Oduzimanje imovine Katoličkoj crkvi i crkveno-državni
odnosi od 1845. do 1966. godine: Primjer Zagrebačke nadbiskupije (Zagreb: Tkalčić, 2003);
Akmadža, “Položaj Katoličke crkve u Hercegovini u prvim godinama komunističke
vladavine,” in Hum i Hercegovina kroz povijest: Zbornik radova s međunarodnog znanst-
venog skupa održanog u Mostaru 5. i 6. studenoga 2009, ed. Ivica Lučić (Zagreb: Hrvats-
ki institut za povijest, 2011), 2:491–508; Stjepan Kožul, Stradanja u Zagrebačkoj nad-
biskupiji za vrijeme Drugoga svjetskoga rata i poraća (Zagreb: Tkalčić, 2004). - On these see Velimir Blažević, “Kontroverze oko osnivanja i djelovanja udru-
ženja katoličkih svećenika ‘ Dobri pastir,’ ” Bosna Franciscana (Sarajevo) 10, no. 17
(2002): 244–67; Akmadža, “Staleško društvo katoličkih svećenika Hrvatske u službi
komunističkog režima,” Tkalčić 7, no. 7 (2003): 47–156; Kolar, “Priestly Patriotic As-
sociations,” 231–56; Stipan Trogrlić, “Istarska svećenička udruženja—Zbor svećenika
sv. Pavla za Istru i Društvo sv. Ćirila i Metoda u Pazinu (1945–1952),” Croatica chris-
tiana periodica (Zagreb) 32, no. 61 (2008): 123–50.