Croatian Orthodox Church

The Croatian Orthodox Church (Croatian: Hrvatska pravoslavna crkva) was a religious body created during World War II by the Fascist Ustaše regime in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). It was created in order to assimilate the large Serb minority and also to unite other Orthodox communities into a state-based Orthodox Church.

NDH authorities finally made a move to organize a domestic Orthodox Church. This was part of a policy to eliminate Serb culture from Axis Croatia. The church lasted from 1942–45, and was intended to serve as a national church to which Serbs living in Croatia would convert, thus making it possible to describe them as "Croats of Orthodox faith". It was only recognized by one other Orthodox church, the Romanian Orthodox Church, on 4 August 1944 (at the time, Romania was also under the control of the Fascist regime of Ion Antonescu). The Croatian Orthodox Church was managed by Montenegrin nationalist Savić Marković Štedimlija. There were some discussions during the 1990s, after the breakup of Yugoslavia, regarding the revival of such a church.

The Croatian Orthodox Church was created, to be considered one of the three faiths to which Croats could officially belong (the main being Catholicism and Islam). The reason for the creation of this Church was a loss of a significant part of the territory to Partisans and Chetniks, as well as the additional German pressure over growing anarchy in the country, which is why concession to the Serb population was deemed necessary.

The church was formed by a government statute (No. XC-800-Z-1942) on 4 April 1942. On 5 June, using a statute issued by the government, the church's constitution was passed. On 7 June, Germogen became the only Orthodox Metropolitan of Zagreb. The church lasted until the collapse of the NDH. Its leader was Germogen, Metropolitan of Zagreb, a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, who is said to have had Uniate sympathies, who was shot dead by Partisans after the war as a collaborator. Many or most of the church's priests were Serbian priests compelled to change churches in order to survive, together with defrocked Orthodox priests, émigré priests from Russia, and some Uniate and Roman Catholic priests.

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