Ivan Šarić

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Ivan Šarić (September 27, 1871 – July 6, 1960) was a Roman Catholic priest who became the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vrhbosna (Sarajevo) in 1922. A great clergyman and benefactor to the Bosnian Croats, because of his activities in World War II he became notorious among the Bosnian Serbs.

Ivan Šarić was born to a Croatian family in Dolac near Travnik. He attended gymnasium in Travnik from 1882 to 1890, entered the seminary in Travnik, and completed his studies in Sarajevo in 1894. He was made a priest in the Vrhbosna Archbishopric on July 22, 1894.

He worked as a catechist in the Institute of St. Vinko in Sarajevo since 1894. In 1896 he became a canon of Vrhbosna. Between 1896 and 1908 he edited the "Vrhbosna" newspaper, and for a time the "Balkan" newspaper too. In 1898 the Seminary Faculty in Zagreb awarded him a doctorate. On June 27, 1908 Šarić was named the bishop-coadjutor of Vrhbosna and the titular bishop Caesaropolitanus. On May 2, 1922 he was made the archbishop and metropolitan of Vrhbosna.

Šarić was a pioneer of the Catholic Action (a project of Pope Pius XI, the inclusion of laiety in the hierarchical apostolate of the Church), and took particular interest in the Catholic press. In 1922 he started and for a time edited the weekly "Nedjelja" (lit. Sunday), which was banned (by the authorities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), then renamed to "Križ" (lit. cross) and finally renamed to "Katolički Tjednik" (Catholic Weekly). He also printed the "Vrhbosanske savremene knjižice", small books about the contemporary affairs of the archbishopric, a total of 55 issues up to 1941. He wrote twenty other assorted printed works.

Archbishop Šarić invested much effort into the financing of the two seminaries, and encouraged the work of Caritas and the missionary activities. He attempted to attract new male orders into the diocese (the Franciscans were already there), but without success.

He took much interest in the national activities of the Bosnian Croats, and he helped the Croatian cultural society Napredak.

Šarić was the archbishop of Sarajevo during World War II, when Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of the Independent State of Croatia. He expressed good will and enthusiasm towards the new Ustasha leadership of Ante Pavelić in the early months of 1941. He was the mentor of Krunoslav Draganović, the organizer of ratlines, and the US State Department considered him "perhaps the most rabid opponent of the Orthodox Serbs and the Yugoslav Royal family". Another one of his subordinates was Franjo Kralik, who published anti-Semitic and anti-Serb hate speech in the Katolički Tjednik under Šarić.

Šarić reportedly approved of the Ustasha plan to forcibly convert one-third of the Serb population under their control from Serbian Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism.^{[citation needed]} He became known as The Hangman of the Serbs.

After the war, in 1945 he answered to no war crime charges as he fled abroad, first to Austria and then to Madrid, Spain. There he made a new translation of the New Testament into Croatian, and published a book extolling the virtues of Pope Pius XII. He died there fifteen years later. His body is buried in the Church of St. Joseph in Sarajevo.