TOP STORY: WAR AND PEACE IN BOSNIA: Sarajevo cardinal a staunch advocate of a multicultural Bosnia

c. 1996 Religion News Service SARAJEVO (RNS)-It’s hard to find anyone in the government-held parts of Sarajevo with an unkind word to say about Bosnia’s Catholic Cardinal Vinko Puljic. Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Jews alike speak of”their cardinal”with hometown pride.”Monsignor Puljic will be pope one day,”says Hebib Sulejman Suky, a Muslim and […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

SARAJEVO (RNS)-It’s hard to find anyone in the government-held parts of Sarajevo with an unkind word to say about Bosnia’s Catholic Cardinal Vinko Puljic. Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Jews alike speak of”their cardinal”with hometown pride.”Monsignor Puljic will be pope one day,”says Hebib Sulejman Suky, a Muslim and owner of the Ragusa Tavern.”He’s young, intelligent, and most importantly,”the bearded bar owner says with a laugh,”he’s Bosnian.” Despite the loyalty of his admirers, however, even Puljic’s closest circle was surprised when he was named cardinal a year ago. The decision came unexpectedly because there already exists a Catholic, Croatian cardinal in the former Yugoslavia. He is Croatia’s Cardinal Franjo Kuharic, who, since his country’s independence in 1990, has tacitly backed the nationalistic government there.

Many observers interpret Puljic’s promotion as a stamp of approval from the Catholic Church’s highest office, a signal that Puljic’s advocacy of an independent, multicultural Bosnia has the pope’s blessing.


Even before war broke out, the Banja Luka-born archbishop of Sarajevo was an outspoken proponent of Bosnia’s territorial integrity and the possibility for Serbs, Muslims and Croats to live together in a common state. Until the outbreak of war in the spring of 1992, Croats made up 17 percent (about 800,000) of the population in Bosnia.

Today, well over half of all Bosnian Catholics have been expelled, displaced or evacuated from their homes. Of Bosnia’s four Catholic dioceses, the Banja Luka diocese, whose territory has been in Bosnian Serb hands since 1992, has been completely decimated by some of the war’s most brutal ethnic cleansing. Two-thirds of the Greater Sarajevo diocese, which is also under Bosnian Serb control, has been thoroughly purged of Muslims and Croats, its churches, chapels and monasteries dynamited to rubble.

In Sarajevo, only a third of the city’s Catholics remain from a pre-war population of 60,000.

At the cardinal’s parish office in downtown Sarajevo, a steady trickle of older people comes and goes from the unheated Austro-Hungarian-era building, which serves as a pick-up point for humanitarian aid.”Most of our young people have left for Croatia or western Europe,”sighs Puljic, 51, whose good-natured, almost boyish smile belies his deep consternation.”Under the right conditions, I’m sure most would come back, but we’re not that far yet. The shelling may have stopped, but this isn’t peace either.” The cardinal holds back nothing in his criticism of the Dayton peace accord and the legacy of international diplomacy toward Bosnia.”Every international peace plan to date has sanctioned Bosnia’s partition,”says Puljic, rubbing his thin hands together to keep warm. A thick army-supply vest protrudes from under his black robes.

The Dayton accord, he argues, is no different than the other plans, paying lip service to a single Bosnian state while effectively handing over half of Bosnia’s territory to the Bosnian Serbs.”The Dayton plan is not based on fairness or justice,”he says.”It legitimizes ethnic cleansing and the principle that might makes right. It treats the aggressor and victim as moral equals.” Puljic insists that the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina is a historical reality. With a giant map of 16th-century Bosnia behind his desk, he argues that Bosnia’s different cultures, nationalities and religions are its strength and the backbone of Bosnian identity.”It would be a grave injustice to divide Bosnia into national states,”he says, shaking his head.”Bosnia could be a viable polity, as long as the majority doesn’t have more rights than the minorities. This is an option the international community has never taken seriously.” Soon after the war’s outbreak, the Catholic clergy in Bosnia joined the country’s political leadership in calling for decisive international military action against the Bosnian Serbs.”It simply doesn’t make sense,”says Puljic,”that at the height of the war we were sent U.N. peacekeepers, and now that there is peace we get a properly armed NATO force. It NATO troops had come earlier, perhaps there would have been fewer casualties, as well as a more just peace.” The most important prerequisite for rebuilding Bosnia’s Catholic community-the right of refugees to return to their homes-is part of the Dayton agreement. But under the present conditions, says Puljic, such stipulations are worthless if they do not provide concrete guarantees for the returnees’ safety.”How can Catholics possibly go back to a place like Banja Luka, where the same people are in power who threw them out, killed their relatives and demolished their churches?”he asks.

Puljic says that an essential component of a lasting peace in Bosnia is the Muslim-Croat federation, the alliance that joins the mostly Muslim government and the Bosnian Croats in a common, federal state. But, with the exception of loose military cooperation, the 1994-founded federation exists almost exclusively on paper. The mutual suspicions and animosity that linger from the vicious, year-long 1993-1994 Croat-Muslim war have undermined the goals of common political institutions, police and army.

International observers agree that responsibility for the federation’s dismal progress lies primarily with the Bosnian Croats in western Herzegovina, whose radical nationalist leadership aspires to break away from Bosnia and join Croatia.


During the Croat-Muslim war, Puljic sharply admonished the hardline Bosnian-Croat leadership, as well as Croatia proper, for backing the extremists. Church insiders say Puljic, with the support of Pope John Paul, prodded Croatia’s Cardinal Kuharic to distance himself from the nationalists and finally condemn them publicly with a famous open letter in May 1993.

Today Puljic remains committed to making the federation work.”We have no other choice,”he says.”Croats and Bosnians (Muslims) have to work together.”(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL TRIM TO END)

The will to live together still exists among ordinary people, he argues. The problem is the politicians-“on both sides”-who have successfully poisoned relations between the nationalities, turning neighbors against one another.

Yet, Puljic has been unable to push the western Herzegovina radicals from their nationalist agenda. Tensions between Croats and Muslims in central Bosnia and western Herzegovina today are high. The Croatian community in Bosnia is itself deeply divided, and nationalists have succeeded in radicalizing large parts of the Bosnian Catholic population.

The longer these people remain in power, Puljic concedes, the more entrenched become their assumptions, and the longer it will take to dispel them.

MJP END HOCKENOS

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