With pain in the soul and great disapproval we have condemned the happenings and the policies in regard to the Orthodox Church, but this was a furious storm against which we were powerless to act. People looked on helplessly at what was happening, and everyone in his heart condemned it, but at the same time we had to let it happen. Many others have gradually come to share your fate. Above all the intelligentsia. They have tried to deal with the peasants in another way by making them say that they feel and call themselves Croats. And indirectly they've tried to get them to join the Catholic faith. They began understandably with people from mixed marriages. A mass of others followed, many of them state functionaries who feared for their lives. It was no use saying it wasn't right to convert people without personal convictions or understanding of the tenets of the faith. They were terrified.

I know that you abroad have observed what's happening here, and that it's detrimental to the Orthodox Church. However, my dear colleague, if you consider the human beings involved, it has done them good and a favor. If we hadn't done it, God knows what might have happened in the village. Seen from a spiritual point of view, we've accomplished that unity of the faith that has always been our ideal. In fact they have stayed with their own beliefs. All they've had to do is acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope in Rome, and for ordinary people that's of no significance. I know it hasn't been done in a legal fashion, for there have been moral pressures, but the responsibility for that doesn't lie with individuals. It's been done under orders. The Church officially condemns forced conversions because they're done for material advantage, but to have stuck by the rules would have been hard and damaging.

The church at Borovo now has Catholic services and the church's goods now belong to the Church. Your vineyard and orchard have gone to some Dalmatians and I fear they'll ruin it unless it goes back into good hands. That's how the revolution has been, and God alone knows what might happen.

I don't know whether you blame and curse me but, my dear colleague, as far as your personal things and property are concerned, the Franciscans haven't got hold of or spent one single dinar. I've saved everything that could be saved. The icons and pictures are secure. I've had the gold and silver service cleaned, and you know what it looks like now? Great!