Srakic said that upon the establishment of the ecclesiastical province of Djakovo-Osijek, bishops in that new church region had agreed that they would visit the Jasenovac memorial area, established at the site of the WWII Ustasha-run concentration camp, to pay tribute to its victims. Jasenovac is located in that province.
"We agreed that the four of us should come here on the Friday of Sorrows to commemorate the victims," Srakic told reporters.
"It is not true that Roman Catholic dignitaries are not visiting Jasenovac," Srakic said, referring to criticism levelled against Catholic bishops for being reluctant to visit Jasenovac.
A few years ago, Bishop Antun Skvorcevic visited Jasenovac and the memorial centre, and conducted penitential rites, Srakic recalled.
"All of us strive to bring the truth about Jasenovac to light," Srakic said, adding that the truth should be respected by everybody.
The archbishop said that it would have been too much if only one innocent person had been murdered on that site.
He described Jasenovac as a paradigm of evil where people were killed because of their religion, ethnicity and ideology.
Those crimes occurred before the eyes of the entire world, but it was only the then Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac who warned about them, Srakic said.
Srakic quoted Stepinac as having said that Jasenovac was "a shameful stain" and having branded camp killers as "Croatia's worst disaster".
Asked whether it was a historic event to have the head of the Croatian Bishops Conference visiting Jasenovac, Archbishop Srakic answered in the affirmative.
In response to reporters' questions about criticism levelled against the Catholic Church over its responsibility for Jasenovac, he said that Catholic priests who had beend engaged in Jasenovac had been excommunicated and that the blame for their guilt should not be put on the entire Church.
He added that during WWII the Catholic Church was helping Jews, and wondered why the public remained silent about that role of the Church.