Čović and Puljić did not attend each other's Christmas receptions

Although they duly sent each other invitations, Cardinal Vinko Puljić and member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Dragan Čović did not attend each other's Christmas receptions. Namely, when exactly six days ago Dragan Čović organized a reception on the occasion of Christmas in the building of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was noticed that among the large number of guests there was no Archbishop of Vrhbosna Cardinal Vinko Puljić, Vijesti.ba reports, Patria relays. 

On the other hand, today at the reception at Cardinal Puljić's in the Archdiocese of Vrhbosna, among the large number of guests, the member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Croatian people, Dragan Čović, did not appear, although this was not the case a year earlier.

In political circles, it is speculated that this is only a confirmation of strained relations after the Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina expressed open dissatisfaction with the Croatian policy personified by Dragan Čović.

First, in an op-ed for Slobodna Dalmacija, the Secretary General of the Bishops' Conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a priest of the Archdiocese of Vrhbosna, Ivo Tomašević, argued that a third entity would further legalize ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Somewhat later, Cardinal Puljić repeated the same in an interview for TV1, and both religious officials were also in agreement in their assessment that “the policy of Herzeg-Bosnia seeks to bury living Croats outside its territory.”