[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 16 (Wednesday, February 23, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
             A SALUTE TO FATHER SVETOZAR KRALJEVIC, O.F.M.

                                 ______


                           HON. PETER T. KING

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 23, 1994

  Mr. KING. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to submit for the Record, a 
salute to Father Svetozar Kraljevic, O.F.M., prepared by Ted Conlin of 
St. Brigid's Parish of Westbury, NY. Father Kraljevic, a Roman Catholic 
priest of the Franciscan Order, and native of Bosnia and Hercegovina, 
has done much to help alleviate the suffering of the people of that 
tragically, war-torn region.
  Mr. Conlin movingly tells Father Kraljevic's story of compassion and 
courage. Having traveled to Bosnia and Hercegovina last year, I 
understand the suffering that Father Kraljevic has seen.
  Last spring, I took part in a week-long mission to the Balkans with 
my fellow members of the Balkan Crisis Task Force. Our itinerary 
included stops in Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Kosova, and the 
former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Our delegation met with 
government officials, toured refuge camps and hospitals and received 
detailed briefings on the military situation in the Balkans.
  At a meeting with Serbian Government officials, I personally 
confronted Serbian Vice President Zoran Arndjelovic on his Government's 
complicity in atrocities against Bosnian Moslem civilians. These crimes 
against humanity are the result of the heinous policy of ethnic 
cleansing, the genocidal program driving the creation of a greater 
Serbia.
  I have long been in support of decisive action to halt the march of 
Serbian aggression, stop the genocide, and give the oppressed the means 
defending themselves. This is the only way to stop the slaughter. Above 
all, those guilty of war crimes must be brought to justice and made to 
pay for their crimes against humanity.
  Unfortunately, the killing and suffering continues in the former 
Yugoslavia. The following account of Father Svetozar Kraljevic's 
pastoral and relief activities in Bosnia is truly inspiring. His 
efforts to ease the plan and suffering of all those touched by the war 
are worthy of our gratitude and admiration. Someday I hope to visit 
with Father Kraljevic in an independent Bosnia, free from the shadow of 
war and oppression.
  Father Svetozar Kraljevic's story follows:

       A doctor tells of an operation which, as a young student, 
     he observed in a London hospital. ``It was the first time 
     that this particular brain operation had been carried out in 
     this country. It was performed by one of our leading surgeons 
     upon a young man of great promise for whom, after an 
     accident, there seemed to be no other remedy. It was an 
     operation of the greatest delicacy, in which a small error 
     would have had fatal consequences. In the outcome, the 
     operation was a triumph. But it involved seven hours of 
     intense and uninterrupted concentration on the part of the 
     surgeon. When it was over, a nurse had to take him by the 
     hand, and lead him from the operating theater like a blind 
     man or a little child.'' This, one might say, is what 
     limitless self-giving is like. It is what people and peoples, 
     individuals and humanity, neighborhoods and nations, must 
     emulate and demonstrate, if today's world is to overcome its 
     chaos, absurdities and lies.
       Father Svetozar Kraljevic, a Roman Catholic Priest of the 
     Franciscan order, and native of Bosnia-Hercegovina, in the 
     former Yugoslavia, is just such an individual. Father 
     ``Svet'', as he is affectionately known by millions, mostly 
     because of his pastoral and relief activities on behalf of 
     all those who suffer in today's war that is the Balkans On 
     Fire, is a man no less remarkable in what means limitless 
     self-giving than that London brain surgeon. Even more, he is 
     remarkable for his humility. He is remarkable for how, in 
     what is an instinctive if not rare humility, he shares 
     himself with the victims of this war. A war that is neither a 
     civil war nor a religious war as some have said but, rather, 
     a land grab by the last of the old-guard communist dictators, 
     Slobodan Milosevic, for a ``Greater Serbia'' that's been a 
     dream of the Serbs for a hundred years. Too, Father Svet 
     in this war is remarkable for how he leaves a trail of 
     light wherever he goes thus keeping cool, under any 
     confusion from terror and trauma, those to whom he 
     ministers and brings relief supplies.
       Here is a man who was born in the mountains of Hercegovina 
     . . . the first reality of his childhood. His parents and his 
     neighbors farmed their slopes and dwelt in their hollows. And 
     when they had to go somewhere, they did not go around; they 
     went over. It would never occur to them to do otherwise, and 
     they expected their children to do the same . . . From Father 
     Svet's earliest recollection, the mountains were a central 
     feature in their lives. ``They did not give us much of a 
     living but'', says Father Svet, ``we did not need much. They, 
     the mountains, taught us to be satisfied with what we had. In 
     a way, they were like parents, they shaped our lives. The 
     other reality was God. Like the mountains, He was just there 
     . . . in my parents prayers, in their plans, in their Sunday 
     worship, an hour's walk away. And so He was there for me too. 
     In the hills, in the trees, in the cows; God was an ever 
     present reality.'' . . . Father Svet grew up in a one room, 
     dirt floor mountain dwelling built by his father and his 
     father's two brothers. It was after the war and there was 
     total deprivation. The Nazi and the partizani had left no 
     crops, no livestock, nothing. All the people had was a trust 
     in God . . . In his village, there was no school. So at seven 
     his mother walked him over the mountains to the school two 
     kilometers away. The school was one room with benches like 
     pews. The next morning, when it was time to leave for 
     school, Sveto (as he was called at home) stood by the door 
     with his book bag. His mother said, ``What are you waiting 
     for?'' ``I'm waiting for school.'' ``Then why don't you 
     go?'' ``I'm waiting for you.'' ``You go alone today, 
     Sveto''. And so he took his first step into the world 
     alone . . . barefooted, as did many of the mountain 
     children. ``When you have nothing,'' says Father Svet, 
     ``parents cannot buy you shoes. My older brother's shoes 
     would not fit me for several years.''
       After World War II, under Communism the Church posed the 
     only threat. At first, they simply killed the priests. In 
     Hercegovina alone, sixty-nine Franciscans were murdered. Most 
     of the others, including bishops, especially those whose 
     example encouraged the people to keep the faith, were thrown 
     into prison, with the prospect of a limitless sentence, 
     months in solitary confinement, and possible torture. Thus as 
     Svet-the-child took that first step into the world, ``alone 
     and barefooted,'' this was the world he entered, the reality 
     he faced, the persecution he would come to know in a deeply 
     personal and collective way. And years later, when he felt 
     called to the priesthood, he elected to walk in the footsteps 
     of the murdered and imprisoned Franciscans by becoming one of 
     them.
       In 1991 Croatia and Slovenia declared independence, as 
     permitted by Yugoslavia's constitution; and then Macedonia; 
     and later, Bosnia-Hercegovina. By radio Father Svet heard 
     the news: Serbs had destroyed a Croatian village . . . 
     while the Yugoslav Army, led by Serbian Communist, looked 
     the other way. Senior Croatian officers in that army were 
     being discharged. The borders were closing. . . . To 
     Father Svet it seemed it would take a miracle to save 
     Croatia--and neighboring Hercegovina--from a bloodbath. 
     The hatred between the Serbs and Croats ran as deep as 
     that between Catholics and Protestants in Northern 
     Ireland, or between Jews and Palestinians in the Holy 
     Land. Present for so long that it was now ingrained in the 
     racial memories of these two peoples, it had been 
     suppressed under Communist rule. But now, the Communists 
     were no longer in power. . . . The next morning after 
     hearing this news, he walked with a friend in a little 
     graveyard behind his retreat house. Pointing out two 
     unmarked graves, he shared that after the war the 
     partizani had come there and killed thirty villagers, 
     after first making them dig those graves. Father Svet knew 
     if there was war, there would be fresh graves. And there 
     would be priests in them . . . yet he had the faith to 
     believe for the miracle of peace. And he shared with his 
     friend the message he had for the leaders of both sides 
     who would be responsible for whatever was coming: 
     ``Accountability!'' he exclaimed. ``Most of them have 
     forgotten--if they ever knew--that they will have to stand 
     before God and answer to Him for every life that he had 
     entrusted into their care, for every drop of blood 
     needlessly shed.'' . . . Father Svet thought about that 
     for a moment, then said: ``The message for the leaders, 
     for the politicians, is the Truth. If they will see the 
     Truth and come to know it, they will do it. And the Truth 
     will set them, and everyone else, free.''
       The rest now is history. Croatia first and then Bosnia-
     Hercegovina became a land of shameless slaughter, organized 
     persecution and mass deportation . . . in the style of Hitler 
     and the Khmer Rouge. Indeed it has become the most disgusting 
     war of a century that has had too many. Into this scenario 
     the good Father took the best of his heart, the best of his 
     calm and confidence, the best of his courage, the best of his 
     compassion, and he put them to work on the side of that 
     land's victims, never asking whether they were Croatian, 
     Muslim or Serbian. For going on three years now, Father Svet 
     in his drive to minister and bring relief supplies to this 
     war's victims, he's had to face down a Serb aggressor who, 
     with bestial abandon and no thought for the soul of humanity, 
     has aimed contempt and worse at all of humanity, especially 
     those who would arrest his course and rescue victims, a Serb 
     aggressor who has spat on innocence and crushed, defiled, 
     destroyed whole generations of yesterday, today and tomorrow 
     . . . leaving corpses that clutter the roads, the cries of 
     wounded orphans, the tears of overburdened widows, and over 
     half the children traumatized.
       Father Svet has been able to do more than any other of the 
     Franciscan friars because of his involvement with Medjugorje 
     where, in 1981, began the reported appearances daily of 
     the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today, nearly thirteen years 
     later, she still appears and gives inspiration, 
     instructions and messages; including warnings about the 
     future of the world, and unprecedented pleas for a turning 
     to God, prayer, reconciliation, and peace. Medjugorje is 
     located in the Hercegovina sector of Bosnia-Hercegovina. 
     Incredibly, while so much around has been scorched or 
     reduced to rubble, Medjugorje itself, just outside heavily 
     shelled Mostar, has remained untouched and thus become an 
     Oasis of Peace during this war.
       Father Svet has traveled far and wide, all over the world, 
     Africa, the United States, Ireland and England organizing and 
     seeking help for his relief efforts. He then personally 
     escorts and leads relief convoys into the war zones and 
     refugee camps, going always to where the suffering is at its 
     worst and danger most extreme. ``He just lets himself go,'' 
     says a brother Franciscan priest, ``for our times and for the 
     love of all people . . . in the process exposing himself to 
     danger in efforts that are extremely daring.'' Recently 
     guaranteed safe passage by both the Serbian and the Muslim 
     forces, the latter now a foe by how the logic of war can make 
     adversaries out of allies, Father Svet made his way to the 
     encircled people of Konjic who were without priests for 
     Christmas, but not without first spending a night with a 
     Serbian commander in the mountains. Very daring, very 
     dangerous. Months ago, while celebrating Mass in his convent 
     at Bijelo Polje, where he served as spiritual adviser for 
     that convent's nearly ninety nuns, a bomb landed in the next 
     room. Through smoke and dark, without lights of any kind, he 
     guided the nuns through gunfire and into the mountains, 
     to safety, and then returned to help others. His convent 
     now a heap of rubble . . . and Father Svet himself, a 
     refugee. Indeed, at one point, for several days, he was 
     listed as ``missing'', thus alarming millions from round 
     the world who had come to know of him through his 
     association with Medjugorje and his 'round-the-clock 
     relief work in Mostar and elsewhere.
       Because it would be Father Svet's wish, it should be 
     pointed out that it is not his life which is being presented 
     here, but rather what God has done in such a life. Thus God, 
     not he, must receive the credit, which is as it should be.
       Finally, at a time in history when the world, especially 
     its young people, are in desperate need of role models of the 
     Mother Teresa kind, Father Svet is one man at least who 
     qualifies. Like Mother Teresa, and too that remarkable London 
     ``brain surgeon'', his ``limitless self-giving'' on behalf of 
     all who suffer in today's Balkan war is so extraordinary as 
     to merit special mention in public and private meeting places 
     everywhere. For with his life, Father Svet strengthens all of 
     us against suffering, sorrow and frustration. With his life 
     he brings into our lives an Infallible Guide. With his life 
     be brings the consciousness of a global unity in God, a new 
     dependence on that God, a new sense of the brother- and 
     sisterhood of people and peoples. He brings Peace!
       We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley 
     of life. But we can decide what happens in us . . . and that 
     is what really counts in the end. How to take the raw stuff 
     of life and make it a thing of worth and beauty . . . that is 
     the test of living. For Father Svet, that raw stuff ranged 
     from the ``dirt floor'' home of a childhood whose priests 
     were killed, imprisoned and tortured, to the killng fields of 
     Crostia and Bosnia-Hercegovina in war whose course is always 
     horrid. Father Svet, we of St. Brigid's Parish in Westbury, 
     Long Island, New York, salute you! America salutes you!! 
     Clearly we are grateful for all you are and all you do.

                          ____________________