Every month, hundreds of men kneel in public squares in Croatia. They pray against abortion, for male authority and for women to dress modestly.
This movement of ultra-Catholic men, called “Be virile”, is gaining momentum in the Balkan country where the Catholic Church and traditional values remain firmly rooted.
But the ideas of these “kneelings”, as their critics call them, cross the red line for many rights defenders: they advocate sexual abstinence before marriage, the absolute ban on abortion and demand that women dress modestly.
Since October, the organizers of the movement, who point to an alleged “crisis of masculinity”, have urged Croatian Catholic men to pray every first Saturday of the month.
Saturday, April 1, in Zagreb, a hundred men gathered, armed with rosaries, effigies of the Virgin Mary and Croatian flags.
“Women must ensure that they do not incite men to sin by their behavior and their clothes,” Bozidar Nagy, a priest in favor of the “Be manly project”, declared in January on local television. And to quote a 20th century Croatian theologian who believed that “covering women in Islam is still a good thing”.
The movement refused to answer questions from AFP, stressing that the kneeling people were dedicated “exclusively to prayer”.
This group is in line with the many conservative masculinist currents that have emerged in recent years around the world to denounce LGBT rights, feminism and “Wokism”, a term used on the right to denounce a supposed complacency of the left towards the demands minorities.
Similar movements have emerged in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Serbia, demanding a return to traditional values and denouncing progressive values while calling for a ban on abortion.
Despite its collective prayers, the group does not seem popular in Croatia: according to a recent poll, 75% of Croats do not support it, against 15% in favor.
The “Be virile” have sparked counter-demonstrations by opponents who denounce a desire to trample on women’s rights. “There is no tolerance for the intolerant,” Katarina Peovic, an MP from the far-left Workers’ Front, told AFP at one such rally. According to her, these men “want to return to the patriarchy of the 19th century”.
Others defend the “kneeling”.
Marica, 66, who refuses to give her last name, says “praying can’t be wrong”, accusing opponents of being “feminists with weird attitudes”.
Two passers-by in their sixties believe that the collective prayers are only a reaction “to the aggressive behavior of LGBT people”.
Ultra-conservative groups have little influence in a country where 80% of the 3.8 million inhabitants are Catholic. They mainly campaign against abortion and same-sex marriage.
In 2013, they succeeded in launching a referendum which ended in the refusal to authorize homosexual marriages.
Six years ago, religious groups failed to ban abortion. But the procedure is very complicated, many doctors refusing to perform abortion in the name of ethics. Some women have abortions abroad.
Ivica Mastruko, a sociologist of religions, judges that these gatherings “are a kind of performance rather than the manifestation of a real faith”. For him, it is not proven that the “kneeling” have the support of the Catholic Church or the ability to influence mentalities widely.
“These fears are unjustified when it comes to Croatian society,” he said. “I also don’t believe that they will have an impact on the authorities, that is to say on the legislation”.
The organizers brush aside any criticism and say they want to protect masculinist values.
But some fear the group is using anti-LGBT and anti-abortion sentiment to advance its repressive ideas.
“Normalizing such discourse in the public space can lead to the abolition of human rights”, fears Zvonimir Dobrovic, of the NGO Domino. “Not only those of women but also those of the LGBT community, like in Eastern Europe.”
20/04/2023 22:47:09 – Zagreb (AFP) © 2023 AFP