TheCroatian Orthodox Church (Croatian:Hrvatska pravoslavna crkva) was a religious body created duringWorld War II by the FascistUstaše regime in theIndependent State of Croatia (NDH). It was created in order toassimilate the remainingSerb minority and also to unite other Orthodox communities into a state-basedEastern Orthodox Church.
In 1942, NDH authorities finally made a move to organize a domestic Orthodox Church. This was part of a policy to eliminate Serb culture from Axis Croatia. The church lasted from 1942–45, and was intended to serve as a national church to which Serbs living in Croatia would convert, thus making it possible to describe them as "Croats ofEastern Orthodox faith". The Croatian Orthodox Church was managed by Montenegrin nationalistSavić Marković Štedimlija. There were some discussions during the 1990s, after thebreakup of Yugoslavia, regarding the revival of such a church.
The Croatian Orthodox Church was created due to the loss of a significant part of the territory toPartisans andChetniks, as well as the additional German pressure over growing anarchy in the country caused by the persecution of Serbs, which is why a concession to the Serb population was deemed necessary.[1]
The church was formed by a government statute (No. XC-800-Z-1942) on 4 April 1942. On 5 June, using a statute issued by the government, the church's constitution was passed.[2] The church lasted until the collapse of the NDH. A small number of the Serb clergy joined it but the Serbian Church hierarchy along with ordinary Serbs rejected it.[3] Many or most of the church's priests were Serbian priests compelled to change churches in order to survive, along with émigré priests fromRussia.
On 7 June,White Russian émigréGermogen Maximov, a bishop of theRussian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), became its leader.[4] His enthronement was publicized by the Ustashe regime and the official ceremony took place in front of an armed guard, with the speaker of the Croatian parliament, mayor of Zagreb and several ministers in attendance.[1] He was executed by the Partisans after the war as a collaborator.[5]
Before the Croatian Orthodox Church was formed, the NDH officially described the Eastern Orthodox Church as the "Greek-Eastern Church", and would refer to it as the "Schismatic Church" or the "Greek non-Uniate Church". It was not recognized by theEcumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.[6] The Church was only recognized by one other Orthodox church, theRomanian Orthodox Church underPatriarch Nicodim, on 4 August 1944[7] (at the time, Romania was also under the control of theFascist regime ofIon Antonescu).
According to historianJozo Tomasevich, although the Church was established as a way to appease the remaining Serb Orthodox population in the NDH, it was ultimately a means to destroying religious, cultural and national ties between Serbs in Serbia and Serbs in the NDH because the Ustashe could not achieve their goal of exterminating the whole Serb population of Croatia. Persecution of Serbs persisted even after its establishment, though it was not as intense as before.[8] In a May 1942 report, the NDH's unofficial envoy to theHoly See,Nikola Rušinović, wrote that Pavelić regarded the Croatian Orthodox Church as "a way to the union between the churches and the disappearance of the schism in Croatia."[8]
On 6 March 1993, Juraj Kolarić, dean of the Catholic Faculty of Theology in Zagreb, was reported by theTanjug news agency as stating that the "Orthodox Church in Croatia should be organized along theMacedonian principle, with itspatriarch, and break away as far as territory was concerned, from Serbia”.[9] Kolarić stated that the initiative should come from "Croat Orthodox believers and possible Croatian Orthodox clergy, because then all the conditions for anautocephalous church would be met". Kolarić claimed that if such a church were formed, it would eventually be recognized by thePatriarch of Constantinople as the Serbian Orthodox Church would never again be present in Croatia.[9]
In 2010, the Croatian OrthodoxCommunity, which was still an unregistered association at the time, tried to restore the Croatian Orthodox Church.[10]
This association was registered in 2017, and Aleksandar Radoev Ivanov was elected as the president of the association and at the same time thearchbishop of the officially unrecognized Croatian Orthodox Church.[11] Although this church has never been officially registered inCroatia and is not entered in the register ofreligious communities, it still regularly holdsworship service in its space in Domjanićeva street in Zagreb.[11] Andrija Škulić also presents himself as the archbishop of the Croatian Orthodox Church in Croatia.[11]
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