Don Ante Bakula, martyr
Don Ante Bakula
He was born on July 9, 1884 in Posušje to father Ante and mother Matija née Širić. He finished elementary school in his hometown and three grades of high school in Mostar. Then he transferred to the seminary in Travnik, where he graduated. On June 29, 1909, he was ordained to the priesthood. Already in the following year he was appointed parish administrator in Vir. After almost three decades, he changed his parish and went to Gornje Hrasno, where he remained until his martyrdom. He was killed by a Partisan woman in the village of Vlahovići near Ljubinje in late April or early May 1942.
Don Ante remained in Vir for twenty-seven years. Thanks to his efforts, large schools were built in Vinjani, Vir, Zagorje and Zavelim, as well as a beautiful parish rectory, and the parish church was completely renovated.
In 1937 he was forced to leave Vir and go to the small and scattered parish of Gornje Hrasno in the Stolac district, on the border of Catholicism, among a mixed population, where he again initiated the renovation of the church and the parish rectory, although he was already visibly ill and advanced in age.
The people appreciated him very much, especially for his charitable work. He distributed free medicines, which were often in short supply in these underdeveloped regions, and he distributed them equally to Catholics and Orthodox. But this did not save him from the Chetnik-Communist so-called insurgents who brutally killed him. They tore off his flesh, while he was alive, piece by piece and put it in his mouth. They killed him at the end of April 1942. For five days they tortured him in a cruel way. One of the Partisans, before they murdered him, cut out his tongue with the following words: “I will give you communion!” After that they stoned him to death.
Marko Bilić (Croatian Catholic) from Lastva tells what Milan Dogo, a Serb from Gornji Hrasno, told him. In 1942 Chetniks and Communists surrounded the parish rectory to capture the “dumo” (local name for a priest, t.n.). Luka Vujinović had told him to run away, but he did not want to because he did not feel guilty. However, when he saw a tight circle around him, he got on his horse and wanted to escape. But they caught him and subjected him to torture. Women rode on him, beat him, spat on him, men roasted him, shod him, and so he went out to Vlahovići. There, in a house, the priest took a handkerchief and dried it next to the stove, in which the fire was not lit since God knows when. This was a sign that dumo had gone mad because of the torture. On the way there he said, “The way of the cross!” Then they took him to a place called Divin and threw him into a pit. Incidentally, the Serbs in Gornje Hrasno attributed all the atrocities, whether they existed or not, to the leadership of dumo.
Dumo is, incidentally, the name for a priest in Herzegovina. That these lies about the crimes committed were attributed to dumo is also shown by the fact that in the first volume of the collection Hercegovina u NOB (Herzegovina in the National Liberation Struggle, 1961) don Ante Bakula is called “a notorious Ustasha executioner in the surroundings of Stolac, Čapljina and Ljubinje,” just as it was customary to do in numerous censored and falsified literature of the Yugoslav Communist regime, which was widely known for censorship and organized propaganda!
The weekly Katolički tjednik (1942) reported immediately after the death of Don Ante:
Don Ante Bakula was kidnapped by criminals – Communists – the same night they killed Don Ilija Tomas. What happened to him then is not yet known with certainty… However, our editorial staff has received information that the Orthodox themselves have told our faithful down in Herzegovina that one piece of flesh after another was torn from the body of the deceased Don Ante Bakula and put into his mouth.
And the magazine Vrhbosna (1942) testifies that he suffered martyrdom, according to unconfirmed reports, by stoning.
That he, like many others, suffered a completely innocent martyrdom just because he was a Croat and a Catholic, and not even his helping the Orthodox was enough to save him, is evident from the fact that the then Partisan commissar Čedo Kapor, who was in charge of the Posušje area, later said that it was their mistake and that Don Ante should not have been killed because he was not guilty of anything. The commissioner’s words were echoed by Don Aco Boraš in the magazine Crkva na kamenu in an article entitled Don Ante was not guilty!:
He was not involved in politics, nor did he cause us trouble, nor was he a criminal. There is no doubt about that. Don Ante was busy with his work, more than that, he was friendly towards the Serbian part of the population in Gornje Hrasno. He did not bother anyone and helped everyone.
Interesting is also the event reported by the witness B.Š. He testifies that Don Ante had nothing against the Orthodox, but helped them. On one occasion he obtained two so-called blank passes for the Orthodox priest and a merchant from Hrasno in order to save them, and accompanied them to Sarajevo and by train to Belgrade to Zemun. When this Orthodox priest returned from Belgrade to the parish of Donje Hrasno in 1945/46 and heard what had happened to the late Don Ante Bakula, he did not want to stay in that parish. He left it and moved on.
We are publishing a letter from Dr. Petar Čule, the then capitular vicar, to the command of the Croatian Home Guard Division in Mostar, in which Dr. Čule expresses hope that Don Ante Bakula is still alive:
To the Command of the Croatian Home Guard Division in Mostar
The respectable title knows about the terrible misfortune that occurred in recent days in a Croatian Catholic village in the Stolac region as a result of an attack by Communist-Chetnik gangs. Among others, two Catholic priests – pastors – fell victim to this attack.
The first priestly victim was Don Ilija Tomas…
The second victim was Don Ante Bakula, a priest from Gornje Hrasno, who was tied up and taken alive by the Partisans. Whether he is still alive or has already been killed cannot be said with certainty. There are rumors that he was also terribly tortured and brutally murdered. But these voices are not entirely certain. It is still possible that Don Bakula is still alive, although this possibility is very small.
In this case, so that Don Ante Bakula is saved from the worst, I implore you to do everything you can for this poor priest to be saved, even if it means to try and exchange him for one of their captives that are in the hands of Croatian authorities or Italian army…
But Don Ante had already been killed, only Dr. Petar Čule did not know that yet.
Sources:
Matija Kovačić, Odmetnička zvjerstva i pustošenja u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj, Zagreb, 1942.
Anto Baković, Hrvatski martirologij XX. stoljeća, Zagreb, 2007.
Editorial/crimesofcommunism.net
