Sister Lipharda Josipa Horvat
Lipharda (Josipa) Horvat
Sister Lipharda (Josipa) Horvat was killed at the age of 43. She was born in Varaždin on March 6th, 1902 to father Ljudevit and mother Rozalija, née Cafuta. She was baptized on March 9th, 1902 in the Parish of St Nicholas in Varaždin, then the Archdiocese of Zagreb, and today the Diocese of Varaždin. She joined the Order on December 1st, 1926. She took her temporary religious vows on December 21st, 1928, and her lifelong vows on November 21st, 1932 in Zagreb. She was a professional seamstress and worked at the hospital for the mentally ill in Vrapče. On the night of May 15th, 1945, a partisan guard came with an order from the authorities to take her away. The explanation that she also provided medical services to the partisan army did not help her. She was killed in the Jazovka pit on the slopes of Žumberak Mountain, together with other nuns. She was falsely accused of being an enemy of the state, along with the sisters she worked with.
One convent report states, somewhat poetically, about Sister Lipharda:
Sister Lipharda Horvat worked as a seamstress in the mother house, then in Zemun, Kovin and finally in Vrapče, but the skillful and gifted sister managed easily in all other jobs. She was a brilliant weaver who decorated her pieces with carefully selected patterns. In addition, she supervised knitting in Vrapče. She also tried her hand with the patients. She gave them all the love of her noble heart. She was truly a worker without pay, full of enthusiasm and passion. She took full advantage of every moment. Despite all the work, she never neglected prayer and other religious exercises. She found time for everything, even singing. She sang well and gladly, so she magnified the service of God in our chapel by singing and making music. Sister Lipharda was a truly beautiful soul who approached God with sincere piety and faithful performance of her duties, to which she dedicated herself every day with the best intentions.
The sister chronicler described the moment when the OZNA, the secret communist police, broke into the convent, killed almost every Croat and Catholic there, and arrested the sisters:
But, amidst the most intense of work, came the Lord’s call:
- Take up your cross and come with me!
- Where?
- To Golgotha!
Why did Sister Lipharda end up in Jazovka? There was a widespread belief that she had indeed been taken to Jazovka. It was known that OZNA gathered the wounded at night and took them, not to another hospital, but to a large grave. Everything was known, one just had to keep quiet! And why would they throw Sister Lipharda into the Jazovka pit? Here is an explanation that was considered valid at the time:
The partisans, i.e., OZNA, brought wounded Croatian soldiers en masse to the basements of Vrapče hospital, where they killed and strangled them. The bodies were then thrown into trucks and taken to Jazovka and other mass graves.
Unfortunately, the sisters, including Sister Lipharda, witnessed this. In order to silence the living witnesses of the horrific crime, in other words, the way in which they “cleansed” the hospital of the captured Croatian wounded, the communists decided to kill the three nuns, including Lipharda. That was the reason for their terrible death!
In the monograph Sisters of Charity, I. (1996), there is only one sentence about the three great martyrs who ended up in Jazovka:
On the night of May 15th, 1945, three sisters, Sister Geralda Jakob, Sister Konstancija Mesar and Sister Lipharda Horvat were taken into the unknown, and nothing has ever been heard of them since…
Source:
Anto Baković, Croatian Martyrology of the 20th Century, Zagreb, 2007.
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