The double issue marks the fortieth anniversary of the magazine, launched in 1978, and the twentieth anniversary of the beatification of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac in 1998.
The September/October double issue of Živa zajednica (The Living Community) magazine is now available to readers. The magazine is published by the Croatian pastoral office in the German city of Frankfurt and features news and current events in the Roman Catholic Croatian missions and communities in Germany. The double issue marks the fortieth anniversary of the magazine, launched in 1978, and the twentieth anniversary of the beatification of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac in 1998. The cover photography is from archival images of Cardinal Stepinac in October of 1953 while a political prisoner of the communist regime. The back cover of the magazine features the Croatian football team after it clinched the runner-up spot at the world soccer championships in Russia. The top news from the Roman Catholic Church includes the visit the supreme pontiff Francis made to Dublin in Ireland for the ninth World Meeting of Families. The top news from the church home front in Croatia is the 3rd national meeting of Croatian Catholic families in Split and Solin. The double issue also includes an imaginary interview with Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac during his time under house arrest in Krašić on the topic of the twentieth anniversary of his beatification under the headline A Desert Over Which Some Sunlight of the Holy Faith Still Shines. Dr Claudia Stahl compiled the questions and answers on the basis of original statements made by the Blessed Aloysius Stepinac. She is the author of Alojzije Stepinac—Die Biografie, a German language book published in 2017 by the Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh company.
Also in the double issue is a report on the Croatian Catholic Mission in the Lower Rhine – Moers area on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary. Osijek was the host in late June and early July to the 3rd Croatian Diaspora Congress; the latest issue offers an in-depth report on that event. In this issue nun Valerija Kovač PhD writes about The Resurrection—The Good News of the Victory over Death as part of her theological series on the topic of Humanity in God’s Eternity. The magazine also offers plenty of news from the various Croatian Catholic Missions and Communities across Germany, including the forty-fifth Croatian pilgrimage to Altötting. Also in this issue is an article on the 19th collection of papers on the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, published by the Croatian pastoral office, from the lectures delivered at last year’s pastoral gathering of Croatian pastoral professionals in Western Europe in Vierzehnheiligen near Bamberg. Also in this issue are the regular columns for the youngest readers, the Kid’s Corner and Youth and Media, in which Dr Danijel Labaš writes this time of video game addiction as an affliction. In his German language message the delegate for members of the Croatian Catholic community in Germany and priest Ivica Komadina writes of Catholics with a migrant background. Another German language news item covers the appointment of Dr Lukas Schreiber to the post of national director of the German conference of bishops for the pastoral care of Catholics of other mother tongues in Germany. Chief editor Adolf Polegubić’s editorial is on the 20th anniversary of the beatification of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac. He recalls the official beatification on the 3rd of October 1998 and the defence he offered to the communist regime court in Zagreb in 1946. What we have before us, Polegubić writes, is tireless prayer for the official canonisation of Aloysius Stepinac as we wait for the final decision of the Roman Catholic Church. (A.P.)