Udba Files on Catholic Priests Found

Secret Udba archives reveal that Udba tried to recruit Catholic priests to betray incriminated friends.

The names of 80 Catholic Church priests in Bosnia-Herzegovina were recorded in secret archives of the former Yugoslavia’s secret service (UDBA). The priests were approached by Udba agents and agents of the State Security Agency and asked to cooperate and spy the enemies of the former regime, the Vecernji list daily writes.

The recruitment was done by the same method used by secret services in Poland. Yugoslav agents kept a record of all priests approached by the agents.

The priests were asked to reveal what they knew about their stigmatised brethren in Yugoslavia and abroad.

The Udba and the State Security Agency treated religious communities as a permanent inside enemy. As it stands in their files, a great number of priests warned their friends about the agent’s demands, so after a while, security services ceased their contacts.