Katolička crkva u Istri i Prvi svjetski rat (1914.-1918.)
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ISTRIA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR (1914-1918)

Summary/Abstract: Even though Pope Benedict XV, after failed attempts to end its outbreak, judged the First World War as such, without attempting to cast blame to either side or to support one of the two warring camps, the episcopates of particular countries, starting from the Catholic teaching of just war, attempted to justify the war measures of their governments. During the war, Papal peace initiatives were rejected within Catholic circles due to their de-motivating effect on soldiers at the front. Andrija Karlin, the bishop of Trieste-Kopar, a Slovene, considered Austria’s entry into the war as justified, because those who attacked the Monarchy and intended to destroy it also intended to destroy the Church itself, since the Monarchy was its most devoted defender. Karlin remained a stalwart defender of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy even after it became clear that the Monarchy was an obstacle to the realization of “Slavic” national aims. The attitude of the bishop of Poreč-Pula, Trifun Pederzolli, an Italian, was in exact line with the general attitude of the Austrian episcopate – enemies had befallen “our Empire” which had to be defended against the attack of destructive forces. In declarations of support for Austrian policies and Austrian war aims Pederzolli was moderately conventional, which is why he was not decried by Italian irredentist circles. Antun Mahnić, a Slovene by birth, joined the Croat national corpus upon taking the see at Krk, and in short order moved from adherence to the ideas of the Party of Right to integral Yugoslavism. Thus, the collapse of the Dual Monarchy, whose entrance into the war he proclaimed a justifiable defense of embattled state interests, was not unwelcome to him, because a unified Yugoslav state was created out of its ruins, which for Mahnić was an act of divine providence. The Croatian and Italian Catholic movements, as the outgrowth of organic Catholic movements immediately prior to the outbreak of the First World War and during that war, following the ever greater concentration of organized political Catholicism with the national question, became great supporters of Yugoslavism, an irredentist political concept

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