HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II IN CROATIA FOR THE THIRD -

The stamp has been issued in a 15-stamp sheet and 5 pendants, and there are also the commemorative First Day Cover (FDC), souvenir card, postcard, and commemorative album. Pope John Paul II wanted to attach special importance to his third visit to Croatia. It is to be his hundredth pontifical journey, which is to be followed with great attention and recorded both in the world chronicles and his personal biography. As a matter of fact, his passage through Croatia, from Đakovo over to Rijeka and then further on to Dubrovnik, will outline its rather unusual contour, an artefact of history. At some time, this artefact of history used to be the border of western Christendom and the western civilizational sphere; to quote Igor Zidić, it was the border stretching both ways. Our world, it seems, is a world of temporal and spatial shortcuts, and in its communicational and diversified economization is apt to draw straight lines round homogeneous areas. The latest straight line of the homogeneous world was drawn on the river Sutla, and Croatia, being perpetually directed towards the East, was compelled to separate its history from its geography. The country whose capitals used to be Vienna, Venice, Paris ..., with Rome as its spiritual-religious metropolis, in the new alignment movement has been moved into a context where historical partnership has but a short time of duration. By outlining the contour of Croatia during his holy visit, the Pope questions the morality of straight lines and shortcuts, defining the identity of this country and reminding the world loudly and clearly about it. The places that the Pope will pass through are diversely interesting for the history of western Christendom and civilization. Đakovo, the seat of Bishop Strossmayer, is the stage from where, by his grand gesture of building the cathedral, the border of this world has been moved further. At the same time, the Pope will visit the see of the bishop who contradicted the dogma of the Pope’s infallibility. Rijeka is the place where the Slavonic and Romance, the Croatian and Italian world meet, where the Pope will emphasize the necessity of reconciliation of memories and adapting to the future. Zadar is that particularly vulnerable point of European history when the price of a Crusade undertaking has been paid with a Christian city. This clearly showed what the price of fanaticism was, the dangerous, corruptive propinquity of ideology and capital. Osijek and Dubrovnik, Central Europe and the Mediterranean, both also have their meaning in this identification of Croatia. Dubrovnik, of course, is its apotheosis. Welcome Pope Carol Wojtyla, welcome on the soil of this small country immediately after having raised his voice against the despotism and brutality of the great. He is coming to remind us of the volatile dimension of history, of its importance in the present-day and future time. And each and every moment of his passage is history itself, history in advance. Željka Čorak