Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the silencing of a religious tourism route The Stepinac Path (Croatia) which reflects dissonance over the heritage of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac.

Paper long abstract:

Like many revived old pilgrimage routes throughout Europe, a religious tourism route The Stepinac Path (Croatia) is a project that follows the model of the Camino de Santiago, a cultural heritage route promoted in Europe since 1987. The Stepinac Path is delineated to connect four mnemonic sites related to selected segments of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac biography. It includes the reconstruction of some old pilgrimage paths to the national pilgrimage shrine of Our Lady of Marija Bistrica. The Stepinac Path is conceived to be incorporated into a wider network of Croatian and international Marian pilgrimage paths. The project is created and managed by tourism institutions, with the aim to heritagize a figure of Alojzije Stepinac by highlighting several aspects of his life. However, the phrase "the heritage of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac" is mostly promoted by the Catholic Church in Croatia, and emphasizes the religious aspect of his legacy. The complex power relations between religious and heritage policies, along with recent revival of some silenced (counter)memories, push the implementation of The Stepinac Path in a silent phase - without the propper support of the Catholic Church, as an influental body in religious heritage politics, the project is weakly recognized in public domain and slowed down.

The paper examines the silencing of The Stepinac Path in terms of dominant and silenced memories, and of heritagization and deheritagization of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac in political, religious and economic discourses and power relations.