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Kosovska Mitrovica and the Catholic Parish of St Michael the Archangel during the Second World War: Evidence from the April 1942 reports

Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Very little information exists to date on the history of the Catholic Church in the territory of Kosovo and Metohija during the Second World War. Thanks to our discoveries in the Archives of the Ordinariate of the Belgrade Archdiocese, much has been saved from oblivion, perhaps even from imposed forgetting. The text focuses on two letters from the parish priest of St Michael the Archangel in Kosovska Mitrovica, sent at the end of April 1942 to the Ordinariate of the Belgrade Archdiocese. These were, in fact, his reports, addressed to the Ordinariate because, following the occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia/Serbia, the parish had come under its jurisdiction. (The Diocese of Skopje, to which the parish had belonged before the war, was territorially dismembered during the occupation by Germany, Bulgaria, and Italy, and by the supporters of so-called Greater Albania who joined Mussolini's army). The content of the reports provides key data on this parish during the first year of the Second World War in Yugoslavia (1941-1942), hitherto unknown in historiography. The letters are of primary importance because they describe, among other things, the wartime reality in Kosovska Mitrovica and its surroundings, viewed through the perspective of a Slovenian priest who then administered the parish. This is of particular significance for interpreting Serbian-Albanian relations of that period, since the descriptions come from a so-called independent angle, with an objectivity that should not be questioned, let alone disputed. Finally, the reports give a review of how the parish community changed following the April War of 1941 on the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, so that the majority were Slovenes, along with some sixty Catholic families. It is estimated that the parish had about 1,500 Catholics before the war, who were mostly employed in nearby mines, but by early 1942 they had been reduced by at least a fifth.
Source: Bastina
DOI: 10.5937/bastina35-61722
Language: English
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4417471876
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