National Warriors in God's Vineyards: Political Catholicism and the Problem of Militant Clergy in Fascist Croatia

Religion, and particularly Catholicism, has long been a source of contention among historians of the Ustasha regime and Independent State of Croatia [Nezavisna Država Hrvatska]. Aside from debates about the number of Serbs murdered at the Jasenovac concentration camp complex, there can be few topics related to the wartime Croatian state that have generated as much research or provoked such controversy as the conduct of the Catholic Church and clergy under the Ustasha regime... ...This article aims to provide an insight into the ambiguous relationship between Catholicism and the Ustasha regime as well as the synthesis between religion and fascist ideology through an examination of the phenomenon of the “warrior priest,” the militant village priest who was presented in newspaper and magazine profiles, war reporting, and obituaries as the representative of a new revolutionary cohort of clergy who mirrored the warrior values of the Ustasha militia man himself.