CWN - Patriarch Irinej, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, has announced his opposition to the possible canonization of Blessed Aloysius Stepinac (1898-1960), according to Serbian media reports.
Letters from the patriarch and Tomislav Nikolic, Serbia’s president, expressing their position on the possible canonization, were handed to Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, during the prelate’s recent visit to Serbia.
Patriarch Irinej reportedly called news of the possible canonization “a great surprise” and said that “in order for someone to be a saint, they must be a truly shining and holy personality and be accepted as such by other Christians.”
Blessed Stepinac served as Archbishop of Zagreb from 1938 to 1960 and was beatified as a martyr by St. John Paul II in 1998. Pope Benedict XVI offered strong praise for Blessed Stepinac during his 2011 apostolic journey to Croatia:
The merits of this unforgettable bishop are derived essentially from his faith: in his life, he always had his gaze fixed on Jesus, to whom he was always conformed, to the point of becoming a living image of Christ, and of Christ suffering. Precisely because of his strong Christian conscience, he knew how to resist every form of totalitarianism, becoming, in a time of Nazi and Fascist dictatorship, a defender of the Jews, the Orthodox and of all the persecuted, and then, in the age of communism, an advocate for his own faithful, especially for the many persecuted and murdered priests. Yes, he became an advocate for God on this earth, since he tenaciously defended the truth and man’s right to live with God.
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