Pope praises convicted pro-Nazi cardinal

A WW2 Croatian Catholic archbishop and cardinal, put on trial by the post-war Yugoslav authorities, was praised by Pope Benedict XVI.

Alojzije Stepinac was found guilty by the communist authorities of Yugoslavia for collaboration with the Ustasha regime of the pro-Nazi Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

This regime ran death camps such as Jasenovac and Nova Gradiška, where mass slaughter of Serbs, Jews and Roma was committed.

But the Roman Catholic pope, on an official visit to Croatia over the weekend, said Stepinac had his Christian consciousness to thank for "resisting totalitarianism".

Benedict addressed a mass at a Zagreb cathedral on Sunday to add that Stepinac in fact "protected Jews and the Orthodox during the Nazi era". ...