Lawsuit targets Franciscans and Medjugorje

A lawsuit filed in federal Court in San Francisco, Alperin v. Vatican Bank and Franciscans OFM accuses the Croatian Franciscans OFM of Word War II atrocities including leading pogroms against Serbs and Jews, burning Serbs alive in their churches, and providing commanders for Croatian-Nazi concentration camps. This little known but shameful period in the history of Roman Catholic Church took place during World War II Yugoslavia and is well documented by both Yugoslav and independent American sources.

Declassified CIA documents, a 1998 US State Department Report, and the 1998 book "Unholy Trinity" by Mark Aarons and John Loftus tell a story that begins with the end of World War II with a cadre of Franciscan monks hiding Nazi war criminals in the Vatican and providing passports for escape to South America along the infamous Vatican "ratlines" whose beneficiaries included the mass murderers Eichmann, Barbie, Artukovic, and Pavelic along with thousands of lesser known Nazis. John Loftus, a former Nazi hunter for the US government, is serving as expert witness for the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit in its proposed Second Amended complaint filed May 3, 2000 in San Francisco focuses on the post war financial aspects of the Vatican Bank and Franciscans OFM alleging that these organizations acted as a conduit not only for war criminals to escape justice but for the flow of hundreds of million of dollars in loot and gold taken by the Croatian Nazis during their reign of terror 1941-1945 from Serbs, Jews, Roma, and others. The lawsuit alleges the renegade Croatian Franciscans engaged in far ranging crimes including genocide, funding the reestablishment of the Croatian Nazi movement in South America in the 1950's, and setting up a false Marian religious shrine in Medjugorje, Bosnia in 1981 to bilk pilgrims of funds. The funds from Medjugorje were then combined with the remnants of the Croatian Nazi Treasury to fund a second round of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Krajina in the 1990's.

For further information on Medjugorje see: http://www.double-cross.com

For further information about the lawsuit see: http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com