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Ivan Tomas and the Smuggler for the Pope

During the pontificate of Pope Pius XII (1939–1958), the relations between the Holy See and the European communist countries were either strained or severed. In such circumstances, the trial against the Archbishop of Zagreb Alojzije Stepinac was held in the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY). The proceedings were completed in 1946 when Stepinac was sentenced to sixteen years in prison. After five years in prison, he was given the choice of either going to Rome or serving the rest of his sentence under house arrest in his hometown of Krašić. After Stepinac was appointed cardinal in 1953, the FPRY severed its diplomatic relations with the Holy See, while Stepinac lost the opportunity of going to Rome and accepting the cardinal’s insignia. At the time, the Croatian Catholic priest Ivan Tomas worked at the Vatican Radio in Rome. Tomas’s efforts and the assistance from an American tourist of Slovenian origin, Frances Yenko Chilcoat, resulted in a fascinating and unusual journey of Stepinac’s cardinal robe and its safe arrival to the territory of the FPRY in 1954. Yenko Chilcoat described her endeavour in a memoir titled Smuggler for the Pope, published in 2006. This paper will first explain the international political context at the time of Yenko Chilcoat’s arrival from the United States of America to Europe and the church-state relations between the Holy See and the FPRY after World War II. Furthermore, the paper will verify the authenticity of Chilcoat’s memoir and the credibility of her claims, analyse Tomas’s role in the smuggling of the cardinal robe, as well as the consequences of the cardinal robe coming into Stepinac’s possession. Finally, a conclusion will be made about the meaning and importance of Stepinac’s cardinal robe being sent from Rome to the FPRY in the context of contemporaneous church-state relations.

Ivan Tomas, Aloysius Stepinac, Frances Yenko Chilcoat, communist Yugoslavia, church-state relations

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