Hierarchy and exclusion – Alojzije Stepinac’s public speeches against racism

Abstract

This paper analyzes the public speech on the issue of race by Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac between 1941 and 1945 as a response to the ideology and practice of the regime of the Independent State of Croatia. On the basis of Stepinac publicly available speeches, epistles and sermons, it is shown that he repeatedly explicitly refuted Nazi racial theories and denounced the persecution of Jews and Roma as unethical. In this way, he also entered the political sphere, to which the leaders of the regime reacted publicly. Stepinac regularly shaped his speeches within the ethos of the Catholic Church and for this purpose used biblical images of the Tower of Babel and the Flood, connecting Christian morality with the condemnation of racist theories. He typically uses an antithesis, insisting that all people are equal regardless of race, and that all people stand against God and they are obliged to behave in accordance with his will. Stepinac explicitly and figuratively refutes the biological hierarchy of the human race, insisting that all people are born equal and have the same inalienable rights, thus directly opposing the racist policy and practice of the Independent State of Croatia, and the result of this is his opposition by excluding anyone from society, which extends the ethics of his Church to all people without distinction.