The Serbian Orthodox Church stated on June 23 that, during his visit to Zagreb in May, Pope Benedict XVI also made two controversial statements, about southeastern Europe and about the former archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac.

In the statement, published on the web-site of the Serbian Orthodox Church, it was said that he made the first controversial statement already on his way to Zagreb, from the plane, in an informal talk with journalists.

"Namely, recollecting some previous bishops of Zagreb, he stated: 'The late Cardinal Franjo Seper, the late Cardinal Franjo Kuharic and Cardinal Josip Bozanic have always said that Croatia is not in the Balkans but in Central Europe, so it would be logical, just and necessary for Croatia to enter the European Union, where it has always belonged in the historic and cultural sense'," it was said in the statement, and added that the Serbian Orthodox Church hoped that the Pope did not have the intention of placing southeastern Europe, also known as the Balkans, somewhere outside of Europe.

As the second controversial statement of the Pope during his visit to Croatia, the Serbian Orthodox Church cited the one about the archbishop of Zagreb during the Second World War, Alojzije Stepinac.

"Although the expectations of many Roman Catholic believers, primarily in Croatia, for Alojzije Stepinac, the archbishop of Zagreb during the Second World War, to be canonized, i.e. recognized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, an additional controversy and, in our case, a painful dilemma, was caused by the Pope's statement, made also on his way to Zagreb - that Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac was 'against the ustashe regime' and that he had 'defended true mankind against this regime by defending the Serbs, Jews and the Roma'," the Serbian Orthodox Church said.