ABSTRACT
The Catholic Church in Yugoslavia is treated after the Soviet Union not because the Church there is the strongest in Eastern Europe, but because Yugoslavia served as a concrete example of a Communist regime and the Catholic Church coexisting. The fact that a modus vivendi had been established in Yugoslavia surely influenced the Vatican in believing that an understanding was possible elsewhere in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union. At the end of the war, there were two main reasons for the difference in policy toward Catholics between the Yugoslav and other East European Communists: one was the experience of World War Two, the other the personality of Tito. The different nationality groups and particularis-the major ones–Serbs and Croats–have a history of difficult and often acrimonious relations which extended into and was reflected by their religious differences. The determination of Tito to bring down capitalism and create a Yugoslav Communist empire was duplicated in domestic policy.
