How Bosnians feel about papal visit to Sarajevo

(Vatican Radio)  The motto for Pope Francis’s one-day visit to Sarajevo (on June 6th) is peace and reconciliation with his trip coming nearly two decades after Bosnia-Herzegovina emerged from a brutal civil war that pitted the nation’s three main ethnic groups against each other.  So how do the people living in the Bosnian capital view this papal visit and what are they hoping it will achieve?  And how deep still are the ethnic divisions between Bosnia’s Muslim community, the Serbian mainly Orthodox community and the largely Catholic Croat community?  For an answer to these questions Susy Hodges spoke to Monsignor Marto Zovkic, a Catholic priest in the archdiocese of Sarajevo and a retired professor of theology.

Listen to the interview with Monsignor Zovkic from Sarajevo: 

Monsignor Zovkic said the Bosnian authorities are hoping Pope Francis’ visit will shine the spotlight on Bosnia-Herzegovina and the many challenges it faces. He explained that the Pope is “popular in this ethnically and religiously mixed country” because of his concern for “marginalized people and for those who have social problems.”  Monsignor Zovkic said the papal visit is “very much welcomed” by all of Bosnia’s different ethnic and religious groups. 

Asked how much progress Bosnia has made along the path of reconciliation after its brutal civil war with its horrors of “ethnic cleansing,” Monsignor Zovkic replied that although Bosnia is now at peace and people from different ethnic groups are no longer “shooting each other” in his view the country has “not yet achieved full reconciliation.”  He said part of the reason for that is because it’s very simple for people to “point  at” other people’s “crimes and failures”  but “very hard” to admit and express regret for one’s own wrongdoings.

Monsignor Zovkic says although people from the different ethnic groups, especially in urban areas, “do mingle,” much of Bosnia’s population is still divided socially along ethnic lines.