Summary

The tragic events at Lanišće, related to the conduction of confirmations in Istria in August 1947, have a prominent place in the after-war history of the bishopric of Trieste and Koper-Capodistria as well as in the development of the relations between the Catholic Church and Communist Yugoslavia. This treatise describes the succession of events during the confirmation and its tragic conclusion, the trial of Pazin (Pisino), which was a mere farce, the cosequences on the ecclesiastical administration and the response of the local and international public to these events in Istria. The treatise, moreover, pays particular attention to the difficult position of the Slovenian and Croatian clergy in Istria and the Littoral in the years immediately following the Second World War, and highlights the figures of Miro Bulešić, a victim at Lanišće, Štefan Cek, the parish priest of Lanišće, and Jakob Ukmar, the Bishop's delegate and Slovenian priest from Trieste.

The author describes the attempt of the Yugoslav authorities to lay the blame for the bloodshed at Lanišće on the clergy, and then on the basis of published testimonies, newspaper material and archive documents proves that the riots during the confirmation in Istria were not so much the result of a spontaneous popular movement against Antonio Santin, the Bishop of Trieste, as the consequence of ideological self-deception and arranged activities aimed at the weakening of the opposition among the clergy in Istria.

Consequently the events connected with the confirmation at Lanišće hindered for long the efforts of the very ecclesiastical circles which started a dialogue with the new reality and cherished the hope that the Communist government in Yugoslavia would have relations with religious communities other than those which the Soviet Union as the leading power of the Communist bloc had supported in theory and practice for so many decades.

See the news coverage of the event in the New York Times.