What is your opinion about the catholic priests who commited crimes during WW2?

“I am talking about Croatian catholic priests who directly participated in genocide and were even slaughtering children. Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović was a franciscan friar who served as the Chief Guard at Jasenovac concentration camp where 750k people(predominantly Serbs) were killed. Due to his gruesome acts, including personally killing children, he was given a nickname “Friar Satan”. Many other catholic priests also did massacres of Serbs and Jews in Herzegovina, Dalmatia and Bosnia. Other criminal acts of the Croatian church were giving “the blessing” and “forgiveness” to slaugherers before and after the massacres, as well as promotions of fascist ideology even during the church services. There is also the case of Vjekoslav Luburić, a devout catholic as well as catholic school graduate who was known as the most gruesome Croatian fascist during the whole war. Even those fascists who were not priests, were extremely devout catholic believers and klerofascists.

In the Croatian nazi puppet state there was a very unique case for entire fascist Europe - concentration camps made specifically for children and ran by Catholic nuns(most notably Jastrebarsko). After the ustaše reign of terror ended, the state of Vatican helped in deporting Croatian fascist war criminals to Spain and Argentina. Catholic church even canonized Alojzije Stepinac, a man who was the head of Croatian catholics during the whole war and who knew about everything that was happening but did nothing nonethelless.”

/r/AskReddit Thread