Medjugorje - Day Four

The 6am thunderous clanging of the church bells was accompanied this morning by real thunder and lightning with torrential rain…but by 8am the sun was out, the sky was blue and by 10am the wet streets had dried. 

By 10am the 60 Joe Walsh pilgrims were on a coach for the 30-minute trip to Mostar, the sixth largest town in Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H), population 110,000, and one that suffered horribly during the 1991-1995 war.

The guide gave us a brief potted history of B-H as we drove along. Basically - as far as I remember it – the Croats originated from the Iraq/Iran area and migrated to this area in the 7^th Century, became Christians in the 9^th century and were conquered by the Turks in the 13^th-14^th centuries. The Turks ruled for several centuries (during which period the Christian Croats were persecuted) until the Austro-Hungarians came along in 1878 and favoured their fellow-Christian Croats. All was well until Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo (then in Bosnia, now the capital of B-H) and World War One followed. Then World War Two arrived and Yugoslavia rose out of its ashes, ruled by Tito (who also persecuted religion) until the fall of the Communist states and the War of Independence 1991-1995 that split the former Yugoslavia into 7 separate territories (B-H, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia).

The guide had everyone’s rapt attention – not just because the talk was fascinating but because if you looked out of the right hand windows it was a sheer drop of several hundred metres to the valley far below; for 15 minutes the road performed a winding zig-zag along the top of a mountain - and we said the rosary with especial fervour, eyes closed.

We survived and debussed to attend 11am Mass at St Peter & Paul Church, which was destroyed three times – in the first and second world wars and in 1992 during the war of independence – but re-built each time, and now includes a Franciscan monastery and tower whose height makes it a landmark throughout the city.

The church is not completed yet, its walls and barrel vaulting are bare concrete but it has excellent acoustics. Father Joe from our party said Mass, including the Our Father and Hail Mary in Irish Gaelic.

There was a poignant memorial in the entrance - a board with the photographs and personal data of 66 Franciscan priests martyred by the Communist partisan in 1945 because they were religious; the youngest was just 20.

There is still tension between Croatians and Bosniaks, a fellow pilgrim was told that parking a car with a crucifix on the rear view mirror in the ‘Moslem’ area of the city was inviting the paintwork to be scratched. A local guide said that they were determined to forget the horrors of 20 years ago and aggression was now restricted to the supporters of Croatian versus Bosniak football teams...however, I was not completely convinced, if only because supporters of the far-right BPS nationalist party, founded by a Bosnian former Army Commander, sees to want to resume hostilities as suggested by the graffiti below.

Some of the wounds of war...
 

 

After Mass the tour guide took us on a brief tour of the Old Town. As we walked along we could see more buildings still pockmarked by bullet, shell and splinter holes and others that were completely destroyed – although there is a lot of re-building work going on and I assume the worst examples of damage have now been repaired or replaced by modern buildings.

The highlight was viewing the Old Bridge, built by the Turks in 1566 – but completely destroyed in the war in 1993 and rebuilt about 10 years ago; it now has UNESCO World Heritage status. Youths were jumping from the parapet into the river Neretva for small change provided by the crowd of tourists – many of them Koreans – waiting below.

Then we visited the Old Town with its wall-to-wall Middle Eastern bric a brac, familiar to anyone who has visited a souk or Hindu bazaar. There is an old mosque with a minaret providing the best view of the city, open to the public for a small fee. What struck me though was a novel but chillingly apt local souvenir; rifle, handgun and machine gun cartridges welded together to form brass warplanes, tanks or artillery pieces…     

G and I stopped for lunch at Sadrvan Restaurant and ordered what we thought was closest to the local cuisine: bey soup (chicken stock, meat, veg and rather a lot of starch) and a mixed platter of local dishes (fapraka, dalme, Bosnian cookies, small cevap, cevap duvec, boiled potatoes, rice sour cream) and a glass of the local red blatina (not much body but palatable). It all came to a modest Euros 23.69 (£17) for the two of us. A small soft ice cream at the bus station provided dessert.

On the way back we took a different route – but still ended up driving along the edge of precipices. Father Joe led us in the Rosary and then a rendition of ‘O What a Beautiful Morning’ to commemorate the re-building of Mostar. Many with eyes closed lapsed into sleep and the half-hearted attempts at song soon petered out...

outdoor Mass at the Altar behind St James' Church

Evening International Mass in Croatian at 7pm was followed as usual by the Creed and (seven times) Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.  I believe this was Mary’s favourite prayer according to a message and I think I read somewhere that it was an earlier Franciscan favourite too. As usual there were several thousand people there from the preceding Rosary who attended Mass and then the various prayers and blessings afterwards – a truly impressive sight!