Slovak church reviews role in Tiso era

The Catholic Church in Slovakia is reviewing its role during World War II, when a fascist priest ran the country. Jozef Tiso, president of a Nazi puppet regime during World War II, helped make Slovakia the only country that paid the Nazis to send 77,000 Jews to concentration camps. Marian Chovanec, head of the Slovak Bishops’ Conference, said the council was looking at the Church’s wartime and communist-era role “that has been intentionally misinterpreted here… under the influence of communist ideology.” He said the council would “search for a correct answer to questions about positive and negative aspects of this period.” Slovak Archbishop Jan Sokol outraged the country’s Jews last month in a television interview last month when he described Tiso’s tenure as a time of “well-being.”