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Business Week

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December 28, 1998

by James Drake

Edited by Sandra Dallas

AFTER THE WAR, MIRACLES AND MUTINY

Ask Tomislav Pervan how he enjoys his job, and he refers to his work manual, the Bible: "Christ said, `Blessed are the peacemakers.' I hope He still thinks that when I eventually meet Him, because no one else around here seems to agree."

As the head of the Franciscan order of monks in western Herzegovina, a part of Bosnia that saw some of the worst ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslav conflict, Pervan knows more about the horrors of war than most. But these days, a different kind of civil strife worries him: a dispute between the Franciscans and the papacy --- with undertones of greed and petty politics -- that threaten the order's presence in the region. It may even undermine Bosnia's future stability.

The Vatican says western Herzegovina is now almost exclusively Catholic, mainly because of wartime ethnic cleansing. In Capljina, 64 kilometers south of Sarajevo, where homes of returning Muslims have been routinely fire-bombed, none of the town's prewar 15% Muslim population remains in residence. So the Vatican feels that proselytizing Franciscans are no longer required. But the brown-robed friars refuse to give up control of their parishes. "All we want is to preserve our traditional role in this country," says Pervan, whose order arrived 700 years ago, when Bosnia was ruled by Ottoman Turks. "Until the war, we were the priests. We heard confession, buried the dead."

"They should remember that they are instruments of the Lord," counters Zeljko Majic, an attendant of the Bishop of Mostar, whose diocese encompasses Herzegovina. "Their task here is ended. They are preaching to the converted."

The struggle came to a head 18 months ago, when authorities in the Vatican ordered Franciscans in Capljina to surrender their Church of St. Francis to local diocesan priests. In response, supporters of the Franciscans blocked the doorway. Parishioners entered via a guarded side door to attend weddings and masses and to make confessions.

Eventually, Pervan persuaded the congregation to drop its protest and remove the barricades. Still, local parishioners refuse to allow a Vatican takeover. "During the war, the fathers stayed and helped us," says Daniela Rebac, 18, who studies at the Franciscan run high school next door to St. Francis. "Even if they agreed to go, we wouldn't let them."

QUESTIONABLE MOTIVES

But many say the quarrel is really about money and the power the money brings. Caplijina is only about 20 kilometers from Medjugorje, where in 1981, local children reported seeing the Virgin Mary. Since then, 20 million free-spending pilgrims have transformed the tiny cluster of rough stone cottages into a long neon strip of souvenir shops, restaurants, and guest houses. "This is a profitable place," concedes Slavko Barbaric, a Franciscan who has ministered in Medjugorje for 15 years. "And of course, we, too, sell our souvenirs and our rosaries and so on. But it hasn't made us millionaires, and it hasn't distracted us from our real mission the care of people's souls."

Nevertheless, Rome has commanded the Franciscans to stop promoting Medjugorje as a pilgrimage site. By tradition, miracles aren't recognized by the Church until they have ceased and an official investigation has been conducted. But two of the six visionaries claim they still regularly receive visits from the Virgin at 10 a.m. on the first Sunday of every month, to be precise, after which each fresh message is typed up and posted around town for the faithful.

Locals say that even if the apparitions ceased, the Church would still refuse to accept their validity. "When the children first began seeing the Madonna, they were taken to Mostar and interrogated for days and nights without sleep," says Barbaric. "They were treated like criminals instead of recipients of divine grace. Even today, the bishop does not accept their story."

Bishopric officials don't accept a second Medjugorje-type vision either. Last January, two young shepherds fooling around in an abandoned house in the neighboring hamlet of Grab reported a vision of Christ, himself. "We heard some noise, and a little cloud of fog appeared," says Ivan Grbavac, a tow-headed 9 year old. "On the shutter on the window, we saw a head." When they began screaming, Ivan's mother, Desanka, came out to see what was going on. "It was His face on the window, Jesus Christ, and I crossed myself," she says. So even more pilgrims come, some claiming visitations of their own, threatening to make this barren portion of Bosnia the apparition center of Europe.

Rome has tread carefully because of the Franciscans' strong ties with the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which controls the region. HDZ politicians regularly come to pray in Medjugorje, where their pictures hang alongside images of the Virgin Mary in shops and homes. Mainstream Bosnian priests and Western peacekeeping officials suspect some of the money made in Medjugorje has been funneled into HDZ coffers. "There's no doubt that in a sense, the HDZ views the Franciscans as its religious arm," says Christopher Bennett, a Bosnian analyst with European Union think tank International Crisis Group. "Many Franciscans deplore this, but it's difficult for them to do much about it without alienating a lot of their congregation."

HDZ efforts to politicize Medjugorje are exacerbating growing ethnic problems in western Herzegovina, where local Muslims returning to their prewar homes have been denied entry or forcibly evicted by Croat nationalists. Many locals, who fought a 10 month war against Muslims in 1993-94, chose not to travel to Sarajevo at Easter, 1997, to hear Pope John Paul II urge reconciliation with their foes. And when the Pope preached in the nearby Croatian port of Split this summer, Barbaric and his colleagues stayed home after the pontiff declined an invitation to see Medjugorje for himself.

Now, it seems John Paul's patience has run out. Rome has threatened the Franciscans with excommunication if they don't bow to Vatican demands. Faced with this threat, Pervan says, "What can we do? He is God's deputy. To oppose him is to oppose God."

But in Capljina, rebel parishioners are determined to stand firm. "The Holy Father is old, He is sick." Says Rebac. Someday soon, she believes, a new Pope may see things differently. In the meantime, she reckons, a few more illicit Hail Marys are neither here nor there.

By JAMES DRAKE

James Drake reports for BUSINESS WEEK from Prague.