MANILA, Philippines—I had the chance to visit Croatia when the Communio Internationalis Benedictinarum (International Association of Benedictine Abbesses and Prioresses) held its conference there.

Zadar from the air was a combination of wide stretches of woods and forests and stretches of sandy, desert-like hills, with a lot of bodies of water in between. On the ground, it was 33 degrees Centigrade, like in Manila.

It turned out we were not to be lodged at St. Mary’s Monastery, the conference venue, but in four different apartments in the Old City, all walking distance to the monastery.

The old walled city is very much like some Italian towns with narrow streets. But the amazing thing is that these streets are paved with gleaming marble-like tiles laid as far back as the 16th century, so that one feels as though going through the corridors of a building instead of a street.

All over there were street cafés and bistros, with people dining—like one huge party! And the shops and houses’ doors simply open smack into it, even that of the monastery.

Adriatic cruise

The day after our arrival, we stepped out of the monastery door, which is part of a line of shops on the street. We passed by the 9th-century Church of St. Donatus and walked down the pier where we were to board our boat.

A friend of the monastery, Yasminka Baylo, served as tourist guide. She told us we were going on a two-hour trip to Kornati Islands to see the Jezero Mir (Lake of Peace) on the Dugi Otok (Long Island), climb the cliffs, take our lunch and proceed to Sali, a quaint little town where we would have our Mass and join the people at the churchyard party.

Croatia was part of Yugoslavia. The first Yugoslavia consisted only of Serbia and Croatia in World War II. Then the other states—Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, etc.—were added. After the fall of communism in 1995, Croatia became independent. The others followed suit.

Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, but Zadar is the capital of the state of Dalmatia (but there are no Dalmatian dogs here). This state is along the Adriatic coast and has about 1,000 islands (I told them we have more).

One moves around in ferry boats, and the islands are like emerald gems dotting the unbelievably bluest of blue sea. The whole of Croatia has about only five million inhabitants.

The amazing thing is when one crosses the Velebit Mountains, one finds oneself at the continental part of Croatia, which is just like Switzerland but with temperate climate.

I learned my first Croatian words on the boat: puno hvala, thank you very much; jako dobro, very good; jako liepo, very beautiful. Later, I learned prosti (excuse me), doberdan (good day) and dove genia (farewell).

We arrived on our island quite early so we enjoyed wading in the lake. Some went all around it, which took less than an hour. We sat under pine trees, gazing at the peaceful lake. As we told stories, four very tame donkeys simply joined us. So we had pictures with them. One tried to eat my camera.

In the afternoon we sailed to another island, Sali, the birthplace of one of the sisters of the monastery. The village proper was atop a hill and we had to climb more than 150 steps to the church where we heard Mass. I was startled when the congregation burst into the entrance hymn. Their volume was unbelievable even with the good acoustics. I learned they had had CDs of their songs.

The interesting part is they sang in the old language, with its own alphabet known as Glagolitic. The priest said they had been singing in this language even before Vatican II. After the Mass, there was a sort of fiesta in front of the church where the choir continued to sing songs and we all ate from a long buffet table while mingling with the villagers.

After that fantastic Adriatic cruise, we settled down to a day of business. But before going to the meeting, I took two delegates to listen to the famous sea organ. There is a beautiful promenade along the sea. In a part of this promenade, tubes were inserted into the sea. The moving waves produce the haunting sounds. The more agitated the sea, the more beautiful the melody. So we sat on the stairs built for such a purpose and listened, entranced at the sound of the organ coming from the sea.

Monastery-hopping

The next day, we left Zadar on a bus for Biograd, one of those founded by the Croats to serve as residence for their kings. Destroyed in the war between Venice and Turkey, it never regained its grandeur.

Our bus got on a huge ferry boat to bring us to where the monks fled during this war— the island of Tkon. There a monastery was built in the 6th century but was closed for 160 years starting from the French Revolution. Forty years ago Benedictine monks re-opened it.

This monastery, which has five monks, is the only Benedictine monastery for monks in the whole of Croatia. In contrast, the Benedictine nuns have eight, including the monastery of St. Mary. The monastery is a national heritage site so the monks can neither renovate nor expand it. They have rooms for only six monks and their guest house can accommodate only two guests.

The view from the monastery is fabulous—the deep blue Adriatic Sea serving like a beautiful carpet for the islands, which are like emeralds floating in the sea.

The bus brought us to the island of Sutomiscica, the home town of Mother Abbess Anastazija, Sr. Adalberta and eight other sisters of their community. We were joyfully met by women in native costumes, handing a bouquet of flowers to Mother Abbess and drawing all of us in a procession to her house. There we had the first of our meriendas (we will have three in the course of the afternoon).

From these three villages, where there are only 1,000 families, came 140 priests and 10 sisters.

One great joy for me was the one Filipino resident of that small village, Jennifer, a very smart, beautiful woman married to a Croatian. Her mother was a Filipino, Sharon Mayo, who married an American. When Jennifer was five, her mother died of leukemia so her father brought her to the US. She later went to Canada where she met her husband, Branco, a chef.

She showed me her beautiful home, a part of which she turned into a bed-and-breakfast, introduced me to her husband and walked me to her garden. She even made me pluck a bunch of luscious black grapes. Then we joined everybody in the town plaza where the women and young girls entertained us with dances and songs and where we were offered our second merienda.

In my 12-day stay in Croatia, I met three more Filipinos: Fr. Tomas Vargas, a parish priest in a Zadar church; Joy, married to a Croatian seaman-turned-farmer, 28 years in Croatia with a beautiful daughter, Ana, and a Filipino-looking son, Lawrence. Then she brought me to a 28-year-old woman, Marilyn, also married to a Croatian farmer, and who appeared harassed having to take care of three children ages 4, 3 and 1½.

After vespers we went to Preko, where we were ferried by turns by a small boat to a beautiful tiny island, Skoljic, where the sole inhabitants are Franciscans. A professional choir gave a concert, singing classical songs, Croatian folk songs and, at the end, the Negro spiritual “Nobody Knows the Troubles I’ve Seen.”

Church-hopping

The organizers chose Sunday as our church-hopping day. Appropriately enough. In this walled city of Zadar, which is about 2 sq km, there are at least eight churches.

After Mass in our own monastery church, we went to St. Donatus Church, which dates back to the 9th century but is now a museum, exhibit and concert hall.

It is in the middle of the ruins of a Roman forum. Beside it is a pillar which the guide said was used for torture in the Middle Ages. Chains were still attached to it.

Our Lady of Health Church has a black Madonna. The cathedral is also called the Church of St. Anastasia and her remains are placed in a special side altar at the left of the main altar. I found it too small for a cathedral. In fact I found the churches here relatively small.

In the Church of St. Simon, the guide told us a rather weird story about the country’s queen who wanted to have sons. To do this, she cut off a finger of St. Simon and put it in a special reliquary. But she did not bear a son—maybe as punishment for desecrating the body of a saint. This church has a pure gold altar and pure silver sarcophagus on the right side altar.

The next church we visited was in a most beautiful round island called Nin. It is only half a kilometer in diameter and is connected by a stone bridge to the mainland. The island is really like a fairy-tale toy island. But it has a tremendous history. It is about 3,000 years old and is one of the oldest cities on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea. It is supposed to be the first center of Christianity in Croatia with its King Branimir making a concordat of loyalty to the Pope. But its bishop, Gregory of Nin, fought to preserve the Croatian Glagolithic script against the invasion of the Latin language.

We visited the Church of St. Anselm, the shrine of Our Lady of Zecevo around which lore is woven. She was supposed to have been stolen but she escaped by swimming back to the church. Our guide said that on big feasts she is brought to the main altar. But sometimes they find her back at her own altar on the left side. The guide said it shows her humility—she leaves the main altar to Jesus.

Another interesting thing about this church is that among its treasures, mounted on a small monstrance-like holder, is a coin which is supposed to be one of the 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas for his betrayal of Jesus and which he threw away before he hung himself! How it came to Croatia is a real mystery in itself.

This magical island boasts having “the smallest cathedral in the world,” the pre-Romanesque Church of the Holy Cross built in the 9th century. It really is so small, 70 meters by 10, that it is even smaller than our sisters’ choir at St. Scholastica’s Chapel and is built in the form of a cross.

Another interesting facet of this fairy-tale island are the beds of salt surrounding it, which makes it a place of recuperation and therapy for convalescing people. Its salt is also supposed to be special and does wonders for the skin. We each got a pack of salt as souvenir.

People and culture

Each region seems to have its typical culinary pride. The continental part is proud of its pure water—that is why the region is called Licka, which means pure. They also have a special mellow kind of cheese that tastes very good. The agricultural area of the Adriatic part is proud of its maraschino wine, made of maraschino cherries which is colorless. They offered us very strong liquor at Krowska which tastes of herbs.

In Pag, they have a special kind of cheese because their goats feed on sage that is almost the only vegetation on their craggy limestone mountains due to the strong wind, called bura, which does not allow other forms of vegetation to grow.

The Benedictine Sisters of St. Margaret of Pag have a secret recipe of a delicious roll called baskotin. I wish I could have brought some home.

Croatia had been under one conqueror after another. I think the indigenous people here were the Liburnians, who lived along the Adriatic Sea. Then came the Romans, the Venetian, the Turks, Napoleon, Austria and then it was incorporated into Yugoslavia. The last that tried to conquer it was Serbia. Because of all these influences it has a very rich culture.

The museums in the island of Nin and Zadar show traces of the Paleolithic period, about 50,000 years before Christ, and around the island of Nin were discovered burial places that left artifacts of this period and the Neolithic period. What I found interesting was the confirmation of the feminist contention that the ancient concept of God was feminine. We saw womb-like artifacts that attest to this.

During the museum-hopping day of the CIB participants, we visited the valuable artifacts saved by the Benedictine nuns of St. Mary. They played a very important role in preserving Croatian culture by burying valuable artifacts during the different wars that ravaged their city. It was only after World War II that they brought them out and, in 1975, they built a museum attached to their monastery.

The artifacts here are, of course, mainly of a religious nature, except for an exquisite crown with multicolored gems that belonged to their Queen Elizabeth. There were many reliquaries—in the form of arms. There is one of St. John the Baptist—of course not his whole arm but a bit of his body preserved in this reliquary, also of Mary Magdalen, a nail of the cross, and a thorn of the crown of thorns. This might test our credulity but, according to our guide, these were all authenticated by Rome.

A unique picture of the Madonna shows her nursing baby Jesus, which is unusual. We saw another of this kind in the museum of the Franciscans in the tiny island of Visovac in the middle of the river Krka. In the same museum, they showed us a copy of one of the oldest books printed, Aesop’s fables.

The Croatians are very friendly just like us Filipinos. I saw families warmly embracing and kissing the nuns. I was amused with Sr. Benedikta, one of the nuns here who does exquisite calligraphy, who plays “making faces” with her two small nieces. In our first cruise, I sat beside Sr. Vekenega and we sang mostly Gregorian melodies and some other religious songs, she in Croatian and I in English.

They are also very musical and love to sing. In fact all the villages we went to had a choir and they really sang loud with all their hearts. In the pub, during our meriendas, there were always groups of people singing. Croatian songs are very melodious.
They have very colorful costumes. In the island of Pag, they wore embroidered wing-like headdresses that reminded me of the former veils of the St. Paul Sisters or the DCs.

I am not sure if my perception is right, but I seem to have seen more handsome Croatian men than beautiful Croatian women.