О PREKRŠTAVANJU PRAVOSLAVNOG STANOVNIŠTVA U NDH U VREME DRUGOG SVETSKOG RATA
ON CONVERTING THE ORTHODOX POPULATION INTO THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN ISC DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Summary/Abstract: The ISC, established April 10. 1941, began to organize its puppet state according to the principle: „a single nationality on a single territory” with the great aid of the aggressor German and Italian authorities. Thus, the Ustaša authorities started the persecution and the physical extermination of population without Croatian nationality. The first to suffer was the population belonging to the Orthodox Church. One of the forms of this process of „extermination” was converting from the Orthodox Faith into Catholic Faith by force. The first phase of the process was known for the unorganized converting of population until May 1941. when the Ustaša Authorities issued THE LEGAL DECREE ON CONVERTING FROM ONE FAITH INTO ANOTHER. Since then, this decree had been the work-program of the Clero-Ustaša Authorities. The converting was slightly delayed when the Orthodox Church of Croatia was founded at the beginning of April 1942, but it never ceased completely. Thus, according to the previous study of the period until 1944. about 240 000 people were converted. Together with converting, Ustaša Authorities organized rearrangement of the Orthodox churches for the purposes of the Catholic Religious Ceremonies. Still incomplete numerical data of such rearranged churches are mentioned in the text.

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