In what capacity is Dodik traveling to the Vatican?

(Patria) - The meeting between Milorad Dodik and Pope Francis in the Vatican was lobbied for by the President of HDZ BiH, Dragan Čović, with the help of the Apostolic Nuncio in Sarajevo (Vatican Ambassador to BiH) and the General Secretariat in the Vatican, multiple separate sources from the Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina claim for the Patria news agency, while the Church was not consulted during the organization of this visit.

The President of SNSD and Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, Milorad Dodik, will travel to the Vatican tomorrow, where he will discuss many topics with Pope Francis, as he stated.

Dodik previously stated that he is traveling to the Vatican at the invitation of the Pope and will discuss in the format of heads of state, "since the Vatican, as a state, has certain influences on a global level."

Dodik's visit to the Holy See has caused many reactions in BiH, primarily due to the fact that Dodik supports war criminals from the recent war in BiH, including Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, convicted before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for the persecution and murder of Bosniaks and Croats from the area of today's Republika Srpska.

The Cabinet of the member of the Presidency of BiH, Šefik Džaferović, announced on Thursday that the Presidency of BiH has not considered Dodik's visit to the Vatican, nor has it taken any stance on it.

"The positions that Milorad Dodik expresses publicly in this regard are not the positions of the Presidency of BiH, and they represent exclusively his personal opinion," it was announced.

When asked whether HDZ can confirm or deny the claims that the President of HDZ, Dragan Čović, participated in the organization of Dodik's visit to the Vatican, the party neither confirmed nor denied.

The notable visit of Dodik to the Pope of the Holy See was also written about by the associations of displaced Croats from the Banja Luka region "Nazaret" Zagreb and the association "Dom Briševo Dobri Sesvete", with the support of other associations that gather displaced Catholics.

"We, the displaced persons, Croats and Catholics from Bosnia and Herzegovina, gathered around the associations of displaced Croats from the area of the Diocese of Banja Luka, received the news with trepidation in our hearts that our supreme head of the Catholic Church, His Holiness Pope Francis, will receive the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mr. Milorad Dodik, on April 26th this year in the Vatican, a man whose image, work, and politics are synonymous with the suffering and difficult position of all displaced people from the area of the ethnically cleansed smaller BiH entity where Dodik decides on the lives of all those who do not obey him and blindly follow him," the letter from these associations states, among other things.

Analysts point out that Dodik's visit to the Vatican has two goals: to break the diplomatic blockade that Dodik has with Western countries, primarily due to his extremely radical policy, as well as the fact that Dodik is on the US Blacklist, and an attempt by Dodik to gain the support of the Holy See for a confederation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is advocated by Dodik and Čović, which would create legal preconditions for the legal division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was not achieved by the war of the nineties.

The idea of dividing Bosnia and Herzegovina along ethnic lines and annexing its parts to Serbia and Croatia has not had the support of the Holy See so far.

Pope Francis visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2015. He said at the time that Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina have special significance for the whole world and that they show that different people can live together in cooperation.

The Vatican was among the first to recognize the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 1992.

Over the past 25 years, the Holy See has strongly supported the survival of a unified and multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina.