？STENJEVEC CASE？ AND ？APTINOVCI – EXAMPLES OF CONVERSION TO THE OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH OF CROATIA

Sa？etak Reform movement of a part of Catholic lower clergy was an unsuccessful attempt of democratization and reform of the Catholic Church in Croatia. After numerous crises and diminishing of this movement, remaining small number of members formed the Old Catholic Church of Croatia (OCCC). The new religious community, recognized by the state authorities, mostly was concentrated within urban communities. Attempts of the reformists, especially in Koprivnica in 1920 and 1921, to expand their activities to village communities were unsuccessful. However, with establishment of the OCCC in the second half of the 20s conversions to the Old-Catholicism became more numerous in the village communities. Examples of Stenjevec and ？aptinovci, two distant villages in the Zagreb Diocese, reveal reasons and motives of conversion. Namely, the extant archival sources allow historiographical analysis that reveals many similarities and linkages among the people who converted from the Roman-Catholicism to the Old-Catholicism. One of the reasons of these conversions were long-lasting disagreements with the ecclesiastical authorities, behind which were political differences. This situation was used by Old-Catholic agitators, backed by certain political circles. Acting in this manner the OCCC had some success within villagers but the Church became dependent on political interests of the government in Belgrade, and consequently the OCCC became tool for weakening the authority of the Catholic Church in the realm of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia)