Author(s): Stipan Trogrlić / Language(s): Croatian
Issue: 3/2009
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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