Day 4: Siroki Brijeg and St. Leopold Mandić

Day four began with the sound of rosary beads clicking softly on the bus as Draga led us in prayer. Before we even left Medjugorje, she reminded us of something Our Lady once said to the visionaries: “I wish people would pray more here.” Too many pilgrims, she said, come and fill their days with talking, shopping, and photographs, but forget that Medjugorje’s real treasure is silence, prayer, and conversion. So, as we set out for Široki Brijeg, we did exactly that—we prayed. 

When we arrived at the Franciscan monastery and church in Široki Brijeg, I felt once again that mixture of beauty and sorrow that marks so many holy places. The church itself is magnificent—warm limestone walls, sunlit cloisters, gardens blooming in quiet order. It’s a place where you feel peace and grief side by side, as if the stones themselves still remember. This church has a deep connection with Medjugorje; many of the friars who served here also served the Medjugorje parish, and the same Franciscan spirit of simplicity and courage runs through both places.

Outside stands a statue of a heroic friar: Fr. Didak Buntić. During World War I, when famine struck this region, he became known as “the savior of the children.” Thousands were starving in Herzegovina, especially the young. Fr. Didak organized trains to carry children north, to Croatia and Slovenia, where Catholic families adopted them temporarily until the famine passed. It’s said he saved more than 12,000 children from starvation. Imagine that—one man’s faith, logistics, and courage saving a generation. This is what holiness looks like when it rolls up its sleeves.

But the most moving part of the visit came when we walked down into the Franciscan crypt (it was the cellar in those days) by the gardens, the place where the Communists executed and burned 66 friars in 1945. The air grows colder as you descend. It’s quiet—too quiet—and the walls are all cold stone. Just as you go down, you can see their faces. Most of them were quite young. Their faces look like those on a seminarian vocation poster from today—smiling, idealistic, ready to serve. Many of them were seminarians indeed, some barely ordained when the soldiers came. One of our pilgrims is the mother of a seminarian. She told me with some wet eyes, “My son would do the same thing.” 

History tells that when the Communist army stormed the monastery on February 7, 1945, they gathered thirty Franciscan friars—priests, brothers, and seminarians—and ordered them to deny their faith. The friars refused. They were taken to the cellar, doused with gasoline, and burned alive. One by one they went down singing the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The last to be brought was the oldest friar, too weak to walk. They dragged him to the pit and threw a cross at his feet. “Step on this,” they said, “and we’ll spare the lives of your brothers.” The old man reached out—slowly—and for a moment the soldiers thought he was going to trample it. Instead, he lifted the cross and kissed it. He said, "Hail the Cross! Vivat Jesus!" That kiss sealed his death and his sanctity.

There is another story that Angelica told us about. One of the names on the list above is Viktor Kosir. He was a young seminarian, around 20 years old when he and his brothers were killed. There is a story that survives to this day. This young man's young brother, who was 7 years old, told his mother when they had found out he had been killed: "Do not worry, I will take his place." That 7 year old did become a Franciscan priest. When it was time to receive a new name (Franciscans receive new names at final vows), he chose his brother's name. The legacy continued, and continues to this day. 

The Communists wanted to erase the Church from history—to silence her, to make people forget. But as the woman who welcomed us there, Angelica, told us with tears in her eyes, their violence only made the Church stronger. “What they didn’t know,” she said, “was that in the wombs of countless women were hearts of future priests already beating, waiting to come forth to serve the Church.” What a stunning image—the blood of martyrs becoming the seed of new life, as Tertullian’s famously said.

It wasn’t until after the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, when Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina gained independence, that the Franciscans were able to exhume the remains properly. Around 1991, local friars, with the help of faithful laypeople, carefully gathered and identified what they could of the martyrs’ bones and ashes. These were solemnly placed in a common marble tomb inside the right-hand side of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Široki Brijeg, near the main altar—exactly where pilgrims venerate them today. The transfer was accompanied by prayer, fasting, and processions of thanksgiving. Survivors of the Communist years wept openly; some had hidden relics or fragments for decades, hoping one day the friars could be honored as they deserved.

We celebrated Mass in the chapel there. I got to wear the vestments of Fr. Jozo Bencun, who was a Franciscan priest from Međugorje, remembered as one of the martyrs. After entering the Franciscan order at Humac in 1889 and being ordained in 1893, he served faithfully for over fifty years in parishes nearby. Known as a gentle and devout pastor, he celebrated his Golden Jubilee Mass in 1943, offering thanks for a lifetime of ministry. Two years later, amid the chaos of World War II, communist Partisan forces arrested him; on February 14, 1945, at age 76, he was executed and his body thrown into the Neretva River. His remains were never recovered. Because Fr. Jozo was born in Međugorje and also served in many Herzegovinian parishes, he is one of the Franciscan martyrs particularly commemorated by the Medjugorje parish.

The first reading at Mass was from Joel 1 & 2, calling the priests to put on sackcloth, to lament, to blow the trumpet in Zion, for the day of the Lord is coming. Joel cries out for priests to awaken their love for God and His people, to intercede for a nation in need of mercy. I told our group—especially as a vocation director—that this is what I look for in men for the seminary: I want men who are in love. Love for the Lord, for the sacraments, for the deposit of faith, and for souls. That’s what burned in those friars at Široki Brijeg. That's the kind of men Joel envisioned, the kind who stand between God and His people and offer everything. We must all, priest or layperson, be people of great love.

After Mass, we entered the main church. There was a talk going on. The light filtering through the stained glass painted the stone floors in blues and golds. On the right-hand side, beneath the altar, rest the remains of many of the martyred priests and seminarians (some they do not know where they are). 

  

On the left-hand side lie two great heroes of the Franciscan Province, remembered for their leadership and holiness. There we saw Fra Didak Buntić’s tomb, who as I mentioned above is called the “Father of the Poor” who saved thousands of children during famine by relocating them to safe regions.  Also there on the left is Bishop Rafael Barišić, first vicar apostolic of Herzegovina.

After lunch and back in Medjugorje, I went alone to the adoration chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed in the afternoon. There, I opened one of Fr. Slavko Barbarić’s books, Give Me Your Wounded Heart. He writes that the soul is like a garden—our faith isn’t just about pulling up weeds (avoiding sin) but about planting flowers, cultivating virtue and beauty. The Christian life, he says, is not just about saying “no” to evil but saying “yes” to love. I prayed on that and plenty more.

That evening, the pilgrims joined the program at St. James—rosary, Mass, and veneration of the Cross. The same Cross that so many have died for here still draws the living. Fr. Jack and I heard confessions again for hours. People carry so many burdens—grief, guilt, old wounds—and one by one they come to lay them down at the foot of the Cross. Every tear, every whispered act of contrition--there is so much love there.

Confessions were extra special for me tonight because I was placed right by the statue of St. Leopold Mandić, who was a humble Croatian Capuchin friar and confessor, born in 1866 not far from here, in what is now Montenegro. He was apparently quite small in stature, but he was known for his compassion. He spent nearly his entire priesthood in Padua, Italy, hearing confessions for long hours each day and offering mercy with fatherly gentleness. He’s known as the “apostle of the confessional,” a saint whose whole life was spent reconciling souls to God. There’s a statue of him outside St. James Church because his mission of forgiveness so perfectly reflects what happens here in Medjugorje. And tonight, it was an incredible privilege for me to hear confessions right beside his statue—to serve as a fellow confessor in the very shadow of a saint who spent his life doing the same.

As the night ended and the square grew still, I found myself thinking of the friars of Široki Brijeg—their courage, their love, their song as they died. Their witness lives on here, in every rosary prayed, every confession made, every heart turned back to God. The Communists tried to destroy faith, but instead they planted a field of saints.