Pope John Paul II's recent visit to Croatia was highlighted by the beatification of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac.

Beatification is a middle step toward canonization or sainthood. Such an honor illustrated the Vatican's brash willingness to ignore the truth and revise history to suit their agenda. Stepinac was archbishop of Zagreb during World War II.

When Hitler conquered Yugoslavia, he set up a puppet government in Croatia called the Ustachi, headed by Roman Catholic Ante Pavelic. Pavelic immediately set about establishing an ethnically and religiously pure Catholic Croatian state. Along with the Jews and Gypsies, all non-Roman Catholics were to be purged from the land.

The largest unwelcome group was about two million Eastern Orthodox Serbs. Stepinac and other Catholic leaders gave their blessing to the "ethnic cleansing." The leaders bragged that they would kill a third of them, convert a third to Roman Catholicism, and run the other third out of the country.

In the following years, they executed their plan and some 700,000 were butchered, buried alive, raped, locked in their churches which were then torched, mutilated with axes, saws or other household tools, impaled on stakes driven into the ground, or thrown into the rivers and lakes.

Hundreds of thousands confessed conversion to avoid such torturous deaths while many more fled the country. By the time Hitler's domain was crushed, no Jews were left in the country and few other minorities remained.

Through the whole process, Stepinac gave his blessing to the Pavelic government's actions. He is seen frequently in photos of the leadership. Many of the Catholic clergy donned Ustachi military uniforms and participated in the bloodshed.

After the war, Pavelic was given asylum in the Vatican and eventually was spirited to Argentina. Later, he returned to Europe where he died in a Franciscan monastery. Thanks to Vatican intervention, he totally escaped prosecution as a war criminal for the Ustashi massacres.

His partner in crime, Stepinac, refused to leave Croatia when the communist Yugoslav nation was formed under Marshal Tito. He was arrested and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He was later released to house arrest and died in 1960.

Vatican propaganda began immediately upon his arrest and trial to position Stepinac as a "martyr" suffering for his faith. Over the years, history has been revised to turn him from a collaborator in the Croatian holocaust, into a saint, unjustly persecuted by the communists for his unwavering faith and loyalty to the Vatican.

For those willing to carefully study the details of the Vatican's involvement in this monstrous exercise in hypocricy, it is clear that any "church" that makes a saint of a mass murderer cannot possibly be Christian, but the political prostitute "church" condemned to sudden destruction in Revelation 17 and 18.

One billion precious souls are deceived by this modern, pagan "Babylon." We must warn them to "come out." They must be told that trust in the Pope, the Virgin Mary goddess, or priestcraft rituals will not get them to heaven. Only faith in Christ alone will give them full assurance of eternal life.

For a detailed account of Stepinac's involvement in the Croatian massacre, visit web site: http://www.reformation.org/holocaus.html. Here the entire text of Avro Manhattan's book, The Vatican's Holocaust is posted. Other information can be obtained in the Battle Cry section of the Chick web site. Search under both "Stepinac" and "Croatia."